Finding Good Medical Resources

This always amazes me. People get diagnosed with a medical ailment and then don't use the good medical resources available. If you need medical information, you need to do a little research to find the resources.

A good patient takes time to learn about any significant medical ailment so they better understand their health. If you are educated you will be less stressed and potentially handle your ailment better. You really do not want to just jump on the internet and google your ailment. That is the worst thing to do.

A good first step is to ask your doctor who diagnosed you on where you can get good information. Its their field of study so they will know where to find information. My doctor at my breast cancer diagnosis sent me to breastcancer.org, komen.org and the American Cancer Society (cancer.org). He said not to believe any information I found on line.

If you forgot to ask your doctor the question, you can start by finding where that type of medical specialty hang out on line. For example, at my rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis, I googled 'rheumatology doctor associations USA'. I ended up at the American College of Rheumatologists (ascr.us). They had a link to patient information on their front page. Then I found the American College of Rheumatology (rheumatology.org). Those two links found me lots of information that really helped me.

For any kind of cancer, I always start at the American Cancer Society (cancer.org) I do not consider any other site to provide information of any value on cancer, except for the American Cancer Institute and a few other government type sites.

Another place to start are accredited resources for general medical information. The one's I consider good are:

• WebMD - webmd.com
• Mayo Clinic - mayoclinic.org
• The website for the hospital where I go - Lahey Medical Center - lahey.org.

I do not consider any other resources to be any good. Why? Because I cannot substantiate their credibility.

It always saddens me when I hear people quoting misinformation they found on line which is completely wrong or just incomplete. That does not help them at all. Take the time to learn about your health so you can be healthier and less stress.