Tag Archives: lupus in the media

Google Health

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I was just taking a look at the beta from Google, Google Health, which is an application to track your health information in a central location.

According to the FAQ,

Google Health offers a single location to consolidate and store your medical records and personal health information. Saving medical information in one secure location helps you and your doctors have accurate and up-to-date information about your health when you need it the most. This in turn means that your medical treatments may be safer and more effective. You can also use Google Health to access a host of online services and tools, from a variety of third-party companies, that can help you better manage your care.

I have some mixed feelings about this application. I do think that it would be convenient to have all of our medical records in a single location. Google won me over a couple of years ago, and I use three or four of their applications every day. I suppose I have some concern over privacy issues, but I imagine that the online security will be better than our pharmacy. My only concern would be the use of the host of online services and tools.

There’s a whole lot of conflicting information out here on the internet, and I worry about people using these online services to do a bit too much self-diagnosis.

What do you guys think? Do you use any of the online medical applications? Do you tend to self-diagnose?

Lupus is Not Funny

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One of my favorite web-comics is called PVP, which stands for Player Vs. Player. It’s a great comic created by Scott Kurtz and it’s the only web comic I read with any regularity.

The strip posted today, It’s Never Lupus, really annoyed me. One of the main characters, Brent, was recently injured in a company paintball game, when his fiancee, Jade, shot him in the nipple. Normally, I would consider this worth a chuckle; however, when he is taken to the emergency room, his doctor says,

At first we thought it was lupus.

Yeah, now that’s funny.

I don’t blame Kurtz in any way. I still think he’s hilarious, and I will certainly continue to read PVP just like I continue to watch the television program that started this running gag. The writers and producers of House placed lupus into pop culture, not as a life threatening illness that screws with my family’s life each day, but rather as a funny diagnosis that’s never quite accurate. It’s never lupus, right? It’s always some real disease. A disease that everyone understands. A disease that plays by the rules.

Well, sometimes it is lupus, and it really sucks.