You’re Sick. Now What? Knowledge is Power.

Oncol­o­gist Marisa Weiss’s advice to those inclined to research their own med­ical care: it’s manda­tory. “The time you have with your doc­tor is get­ting pro­gres­sively shorter, yet there’s so much more to talk about. You have to pre­pare for this impor­tant meet­ing.” This New York Times spe­cial sec­tion, Decod­ing Your Health, offers use­ful advice on eval­u­at­ing what you might find: a primer on inter­pret­ing med­ical stud­ies shows that “no mat­ter how com­pelling and excit­ing a hypoth­e­sis is, we don’t know whether it works with­out clin­i­cal tri­als”; and self-diagnosis via the inter­net may well prove you have a fool for a doc­tor.