Since Larry Page and Sergey Brin
rolled out Google in 1998, the unknowns in the world have shrunk drastically.
“Google”, which started as a noun has since then been promoted to a verb and
the whole host of techies have taken to the verb in a way that a baby duck
takes to swimming.
Google has become the omnipotent
– provider of all. Whether it is pirated mp3s of the latest Bollywood flick,
DVDrip of the latest Hollywood blockbuster or definitions of complex medical
terms like bilateral renal pelvic displacia, google knows just where to find
them.
What this has accomplished is
that everyone with an access to an internet connection and working knowledge of
any browser has turned into a self-taught doctor. Rather than what the actual
doctor says, people have now started believing the links that Google dishes
out.
The one ritual after we got each
of the scan report was to come home and religiously google each of the terms in
the report. Who cares that the Doctor told everything was normal? We wanted to
have Google’s opinion of the same. First couple of times, this exercise went
off without any red flags getting raised. Then came the anomaly scan report.
In the anomaly scan report; there
was a mention of mild bilateral renal pelvic displacia. During the scan, the
Doc performing the scan had certified that everything looks good and there are
no issues. But later, while taking a second opinion from Dr.Google, we found
that the meaning of mild bilateral renal pelvic displacia is that the baby’s
kidneys are larger than they should be. Cue Panic. On further consultation with
other webpages referred to by Dr.Google, we came to know that the kidneys
should be only around 4.5 mm while in our case it was 4.7 mm. one fifth of a
millimeter was proving to be the cause of concern.
There comes another question. Who
decides what is normal? In an age where we didn’t have machines which could
measure a yet to be born baby’s kidney up to one tenth of a millimeter, didn’t
people have babies? What if the baby has larger than average kidneys? The term
average itself denotes that there has to be values more than the said number.
Otherwise, this wouldn’t be the average. So who says a 4.7 mm kidney is
abnormal while a 4.5 mm one is not? It seems to be with more knowledge man
gains, instead of getting more answers; he is faced with more questions.
Anyways, this mild state of panic
continued till the next scan, where it was certified that the kidneys are now
of regulation length and are well within the “normal” range.
Fast forward 3-4 months. My wife spent
her maternity leave at home, in Kerala, waiting for the young one to arrive. In
Kerala, we had opted to consult Dr. Prameela Philip at Poyanil Hospital,
Kozhencherry. During the first scan conducted there, my wife, with all the
knowledge gained from Google, asked the doctor about the amniotic fluid level.
With what could have been an amused smile, the doctor replied “ Aavashyathinu
undu” meaning there is enough. The succinctly worded message within her
response that I could decipher was, “Leave the medical worries to us doctors.
You just do what we tell you to do”.
In the world where all kinds of
information are available at a mere touch of your finger, if only that were
possible.
