Web diagnosis: healthy searching

From the ABC Health and Wellbeing , 18 March 2009:
David's troubles began after a trip to the Middle East. It might have been the hefty dose of food poisoning he copped, or the fact he spent much of the trip lugging someone else's heavy luggage. Either way, it did not come as a huge surprise that he developed a pain in his abdomen when he came home.
He was referred to a couple of gastroenterologists who, after numerous, apparently inconclusive investigations, diagnosed him with irritable bowel syndrome and recommended some dietary interventions.
Unfortunately, the doctors were wrong, and David, a 33-year-old environmental lawyer, suffered two years of often excruciating pain because it didn't cross his mind that his doctors might have missed something.
In the end, an entry in a medical book caught his eye, prompting David to type 'hernia' into a search engine. "The symptoms matched it absolutely perfectly," he says. "I went to local GP in Sydney, described the symptoms and said 'I think I've got a hernia'." The GP agreed, performed a simple on-the-spot test and confirmed the diagnosis within 60 seconds. Why was such a simple diagnosis missed? David thinks it may have been because he was being investigated by gastroenterologists, and "to a guy with a hammer, everything looks like a nail".
David is one of millions of Australians who use the internet to find health information. We use it to try and diagnose ourselves (with varying degrees of success), to learn more about a new diagnosis, to make contact with people who share our conditions, to understand a symptom that may not initially be worth visiting a doctor for, or just to keep ourselves that little bit more informed about the state of our bodies. Read more.

United front tracks silent menace

From The Australian, 4 April 2009:
THEY are called "silent angels", little girls with beautiful faces, touched by a random genetic mutation that has rendered them speechless and robbed them of their chance of a normal life.
Meredith Drakes is one of these silent angels. Now 21, she cannot speak or walk, is wheelchair-bound and dependent on her parents. Her only means of communication is her eyes and hands, which her mother, Astrid Drakes, says she puts to good use.
"She communicates things like her gratitude; she leans across, looks at your eyes, pats your arm," Astrid Drakes says.
At age two, Meredith was diagnosed with a rare and poorly understood condition called Rett syndrome. The diagnosis came only after her worried parents had been bounced from expert to expert, each with their own thoughts on what might be causing Meredith's strange symptoms and behaviours. Read more.