Do Internet Health Forums Ever Help Anyone?

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    For many years I have suffered from breathing problems related to a combination of Chronic sinusitis and GERD. I have even published a couple of articles on HubPages about this. The first one was called "The Scourge of Chronic Sinusitis and GERD Combination"in which I described my symptoms and what medical help I was receiving. Four years later I published another article called "What is Really Wrong With Me?" in which I shared my my thoughts and feelings of not being able to have received any help with these conditions. I really had hoped that by publishing these articles someone would comment about how they had found something to help them, if they were suffering from the same conditions.

    I have seen a number of doctors here in the US and in Malaysia, who had no idea what I was talking about and even shrugged off my complaints.  The only diagnoses I have gotten were either GERD or Chronic Sinusitis with associated asthma symptoms. COPD was ruled out, even though I have been prescribed with COPD medications, which did not help. I have tried every inhaler and nasal spray that is on the market, with no results. Because I could not get any answers from my doctors I began visiting numerous Health Forums related to respiratory or breathing problems. On these forums I found large numbers of people suffering from the same maladies as I have been suffering with.  I have spent hours reading the accounts of their symptoms and what they have done to alleviate them.  Some of them have tried the same medications that I have tried and were helped; while others were not. The consensus was that most, if not all, of these people have been suffering, sometimes for years, but have not gotten any real relief. It is very discouraging for me and I'm sure for everyone else not to be able to get some sort of relief so that we may be able to live a normal life.

    What really makes me mad is that every once and a while a doctor will reply to some of the patients sharing their symptoms, telling them to contact their physician! On some of these health forums the patients actually pay for a online consultation and share the results on the forum. Once again they were told to contact their physicians. What kind of morons are these doctors that they don't listen to what is being said? For years we all have been going to our physicians and hearing the same thing over and over, before we're told to "learn to live with it" or some other asinine excuse for not knowing what is wrong!

    I'm not complaining about these forums, on the contrary, I am grateful to them for the support they offer me and thousands of other people. I just can't understand that after all of the forum posts over a period of years why there has not been one single healthcare professional who has offered some consolation or other ray of hope.

Do you want to get rich quick?

 

A few weeks ago I was thinking about something that I could do to earn a little extra money, while sitting at home. I am retired and I have a good deal of free time to spare, so I thought working online would be a good idea. I searched the internet looking for online jobs to make extra money. There were thousands of sites promising to make me rich. Everything from medical transcription and starting my own business to taking surveys. Many sites required and investment or possession of some sort of certification.

After some consideration I decided upon taking surveys as this did not require any investment or special training. I chose 3 sites to join and proceeded to make my fortune. I found that there are quite a number of surveys out there, but qualifying for them was most difficult. A few times I spent approximately 3 hours searching for surveys and only finding one or two where I was accepted. Many times I would be more than half way through a survey only to be disqualified for no reason. Most of the time spent was for answering questions just to qualify for a survey.

The testimonials on all of these survey sites proudly proclaim incomes in the hundreds of dollars of week for a few hours of work. The average survey I found paid about $.38 to $.50 for a 20 to thirty minute survey. Surveys that paid $1 to $2.00 required a credit card and an investment of money up front. In 7 days time, spending about 40 hours on the computer I made about $20! So if a person were to make say $200 a week, he would have to be qualified for every survey he attempted and successfully complete each of those surveys. The most he would probably earn would be $1 and hour doing 3 twenty minute surveys. He would be working approximately 200 hours to accomplish this goal. This is definitely NOT part time work and definitely NOT a way to get rich quick.The old adage, "if it's too good to be true, isn't" certainly applies here.

It has been a few months since I stopped the nonsense of filling out surveys, but I am still not free from the effects of doing the. For about a month I would receive about 3 to 4 phone calls trying to sell me health products. At first I politely refused and told the caller not to call me again, but the calls continued. Each time a different caller, each with an Indian accent, would call and ask for me as he mispronounced my name. The more calls I received the angrier I would get in telling them not to call. They seemed not to care and continued talking until I hung up. Eventually the frequency of the calls ebbed, until I would receive maybe one call a week. For now they hopefully have stopped. I would strongly recommend to anyone who wanted to make some extra cash by taking surveys that they think twice about it, an definitely do not give out a telephone number, home address or email address.