How I Stay Sane When the Internet Tries to Diagnose My Mystery Illness

"You have retrobulbar abscess/cellulitis. That's a true emergency," an internet stranger recently commented on a TikTok of mine. Admittedly, the video is of me packing for an impromptu trip to the ER, but as someone with an undiagnosed chronic illness, comments like that only fan the flames of my medical anxiety. "I think you are allergic to your eye makeup," another person wrote in a separate video. "Go to the ER before you go blind." On the internet, everyone is an expert. Or at least that's what it seems like when you scroll through the comments on #medicaltok. Underneath my videos, people . . .