Hypochondria or is it cyberchondria?

Being a hyprochondriac can present its problems.

I am a fairly studious character, a fault some may say, but my fascination with health started

at a young age, probably about six or seven as a fairly advanced reader.

My father's bookshelf had Samuel Pepys' Diary (or Pepis as I heard a broadcaster say once, philistine), the Karma Sutra (yes) and the PIP Health Manual that was about a million pages. I was drawn to it.

I was obsessed by the self-diagnosis. Headache? Yes. Earache? Yes. Answer: Death. Or near-certain death.

I couldn't put the damn thing down.

By the age of 15 I had rattled through it and had become a little Doogie Howser. A cold meant meningitis - which was pretty horrific as my little brother Mike had it. Our kid. And that nearly finished him and my poor mum. A tiny little twinge after playing football meant amputation.

And then came google.

I will give you one particular episode when I injured my knee playing football. I took a lot of knocks as I was a flair player in the guise of Eddie Gray. It was a hefty one on my right leg, a leg incidentally where I broke the tib and fib with my ankle hanging by the nerves.

The tackle was a bad one on the Sunday, I played on and got two nutmegs as well. But on Monday it was sore, stiff, locked and pretty painful.

I got on the phone to google at around midday. By two o'clock I had practically diagnosed myself with a cruciate ligament and needed an operation. I had probably thrown in an ACL at some point too. I was out for a year minimum.

Carting myself off to casualty, I sat and waited for four hours to be told it was a sprain. I didn't believe her.

So I booked an MRI scan for about £300. I'd believe that.

But then I googled the M for Magnetic, and worried about the titanium rod in my leg from the tib and fib break. Would it suck the metal out of my leg and stick on the roof of the machine?

I'd have a gaping flesh wound. I actually did look it up.

Luckily titanium is safe.

I got the report, it was a grade 1, minor. I relaxed. I had written concrete proof. I googled grade 1 ligament injuries and it returned two to four weeks. Okay that's not too bad. Then a caveat - serious ones four to 12 months. Why does it do it to me?

A week later I started to doubt the scan. I was still sore. Was the doctor a real doctor? Was he an imposter that had spent a life reading that PIP manual?

I then visited a physio for extra clarification. As I didn't believe the MRI report. The physio said it was a minor Grade 1 - and I was 65 quid lighter.