Making Rash Decisions

Tonight, for what was surprisingly not the first time, I found myself scouring the internet, looking at random pictures of bug bites and rashes. If memory serves me, this was the second time I have done this and neither time was for me. As it turns out, even with my extensive outdoor activities, I rarely get unexplained skin issues.

Just on a side note, typing skin issues kind of feels dirty and wrong. It feels unnatural, but I am a slave to the keys.

Anyway, to back it up just a bit. It was a little after 3 a.m. when my friend messaged me asking if I had random bug bites. Not at all the kind of question you expect to get at 3 a.m., I told her I did not and then as anyone would I asked why. Long story short, she had strange, itchy, red marks that resembled mosquito bite on her legs, but they all seemed to manifest at once and out of the blue.

I was talking with her, trying to find out what may have caused all of this and being my regular reassuring self, but all the while I was researching whatever I could on the subject via Google. As I said, this was not my first trip down said road, so I had some prior knowledge base from the last time. The biggest problem was that the last time I had far more information to start with than I did this time.

Everything starts out simple enough, general information about bug bites and skin rashes. I find myself looking at pictures of things I would normally never search out, but it was all relatively harmless and I was sure my friend would be fine.

The rabbit hole that is Google however, goes very very deep. Before I knew it, I was careening down the slide of the internet head first. What began as something simple as a mild allergic reaction, now in my head had become a multitude of potentially very serious conditions. I told my friend none of these things so as to not worry her and to not make me look like a complete weirdo.

I saw images of rotting flesh and gangrenous limbs. I saw sore and rashes that had been itched to bloody pulps. I learned of rare diseases and wildly uncommon side-effect to very common drugs. The rabbit hole took me to places I don't care to see again, I felt as if I had a direct line to the paranoia of individuals. . . and it was infectious.

Before I knew it, though briefly, I was very concerned for my friend's safety, but again I said nothing which is what I assume a rational person would do. If I divulged these thoughts to her, I would surely only be succumbing to the paranoia. I soon got a hold of myself again and crawled my way back up the rabbit hole, but the entire harrowing adventure got me thinking.

Big surprise I know, me thinking.

With all the wonders the internet has done for learning, communication and sharing of ideas and information, it has hindered perhaps just as much. I consider myself a rational person and it only took fifteen minutes of digging to turn me into a temporary hypochondriac. We all have some types of irrational, paranoid delusions and now we all have a medium through which to enhance and project them. It is easy to get lost and hard to separate the facts for the crazy, the internet is indeed a tangled web.

I guess all I am trying to say is, the internet is amazing, but if you are going to take the blue pill and go down the rabbit hole, make sure you have the red pill with you too so you can come back.

Finally, on a completely unrelated note, I have spent my entire life not thinking James and the Giant Peach was a metaphor for something far less kid friendly, but now I am having second thoughts. I think this may have to be a different post entirely. . .