Why One Shouldn't Rely on WebMD for Health Care

So in the past 24 hours, I've experienced the following symptoms: sore throat, painful swallowing, sinus pressure, slight cough, stuffy nose, migraine type headache.

Huh? First I thought it was strep throat. So I checked the back of my throat in the mirror with a flashlight (looking for the telltale white or yellow spots). No dice. The throat still felt a little sore on the outside, but that was probably from my constant pressing on where I think my lymph nodes are, attempting to decide if they were swollen.

Second diagnosis - avian bird flu. (Hello, I have several of the symptoms - cough, sore throat - and we have eaten a lot of chicken lately, and one just cannot be too careful.) Apparently, I would have had to actually run around in a chicken pen... with live chickens or poultry... who were infected with the virus. Fine, apparently, there won't be a bird flu scare in Northwest Washington.

I went to bed last night fairly certain it was just a cold, and vowed to drink orange juice and continue carrying on like a child suck it up and deal. But then I woke up at 4:45am with a blistering headache. It felt like either a) I had developed a brain tumor overnight, b) my brain was swelling and pushing on the outside of my skull, or c) someone put my head in a vise grip, then filled all of my sinus cavities with Krazy glue, and finished off the torture by repeatedly cracking me upside the head with a baseball bat.

After twenty minutes of lying in bed and debating waking up NavyGuy, I opted to do a quick search on brain swelling (because if I'm going to wake NavyGuy up before six a.m. for a medical emergency, it better be real and not another case of "the girl who cried Ebola"). I've seen enough episodes of House to know that brain swelling, aka edema, is fairly serious. However, I'm writing this post a good twelve hours after the onset of symptoms, so we can probably assume it's not any of the causes of brain swelling (meningitis, encephalitis, or other scary sounding itises).

Eventually I decided to take some Tylenol and try to go back to sleep. But now I've still got a headache, I haven't done anything productive all day, and my sore throat is coming back. Thoughts on what this mystery illness could be? I've always had a secret desire to come down with a (non-fatal) illness that is brand new and could be named after me, and I'm wondering if this is my shot.

Editor's Note: NavyGuy squashed my new disease plan by pointing out that most diseases get named after the doctor, not the patient. I countered with Lou Gehrig's disease, and he said that 1) I'm not a famous baseball star, and 2) getting a disease named after you is hardly equal compensation for dying.