I bet the last time you went to the doctor you left more uncertain than you went in. Your appointment was filled with probing questions completely irrelevant to your ailments (seriously why does anyone care if you do meth?) and the bastard wouldn’t give you antibiotics to cure your cold.

The specialists and follow-ups didn’t help either, especially when you could have gone online, diagnosed yourself and found the cure for whatever your issue is at nearly zero out of pocket cost and no Foot and Mouth exposure (fucking Foot and Mouth).

So what do you do when the internet is the best diagnostician you know but you need drugs you just aren’t ready to buy over web?

Research

WebMD the symptoms, then print out the diagnosis and take it with you. Your doctor is probably pretty good at their job but they don’t have time to go over every little ache and twinge with you. WebMD does.

Discuss

Take the diagnosis to your appointment, explain to your doctor that you won’t waste their time by re-evaluating your symptoms. Your doctor will be impressed with your initiative and will prescribe you a treatment without further discussion. They know when they’ve been outsmarted.

Take control

Once you’ve been prescribed something, take it as you see fit. The directions state that you should finish the entirety of the prescribed antibiotics, but the risk of creating an antibiotic resistant secondary infection is low, because some blog told you so (please don’t quote me on that). Feeling better is being better, there is no need drag on your treatment.