General

I work in healthcare, let me get this straight.
Doctors aren't gods and they don't know everything. There are good doctors, bad doctors, and retarded doctors.
Doctors aren't experts in everything. Your family doctor only has a range of expertise for specific common illness/health problems etc. Once its out of their range, they refer you to a specialist, or order a mode for diagnosis.

So yes, if you go to your family doctor with a dark line problem on your thumb, he/she will not know what the f** you're talking about. That doesn't mean he's a bad doctor.
When you told him about that thing you read on the internet, that would be the first time he heard it. He will then order a routine blood work for you just so you can feel safe and satisfied with your life.

In some cases where you feel like your family doctor is wrong, you can always push for further diagnosis.

I don't think I've been to a doctor in like 10 years.

@greatbolshy: LOL right? Most doctors would already be writing a pre$cription if you told em you had a headache

doctors out here tryna save u money cuz he knows it aint a problem and ur over here questioning him smh

Im sure he told you the blood test thing so you could ''rest assured'' that you're okay.
It's annoying but yes, thats what we do when the patient insists there's something wrong with him

@beefly: I totally agree with both you and readers here. A lot of the time googling your health problems will only make you think you have something far more severe than you actually do.

I was never really a fan of of googling my health problems, I do always try to google remedies for simple, small health annoyances though (sore throat, canker sores, etc.)

@helpingly: googling your health issues usually results in self-diagnosing oneself with cancer.

Google results aren't going to say anything that may be accurate either. There's a tendency to look for what is the worse case scenario and to over-exaggerate the situation as such. It could be that it is that worse case, but it could also be a multitude of other things, and perhaps the results you saw may also suggest other things. Google isn't a doctor either, and neither are the more common websites that pop up on Google when you look up things like this (ex. WebMD). They may be useful as general references when it comes to certain conditions, but I wouldn't use that as a diagnostic tool. So you should also take those findings with a grain of salt.

I would have tried to see if the family doctor can refer you to some other specialist (as helpingly said). They may be able to give you more information then. But I wouldn't expect a family doctor to do much - they are not going to know everything there is to know. And switching family doctors may not necessarily help either - perhaps you may find one who is better, but you can also find one who may even be worse.

I totally agree with you here. Keep in mind that this dude is only a family doctor, and I mean that in the least offensive way possible, so it is impossible for him to know what every single little black line on a person's thumb can mean. The field of medicine is huge and to expect every doctor to know everything is impractical.

It is for this reason that specialists exist. Now, if you go to a specialist and they say that it's probably nothing even though your google results show otherwise, then we might have a problem.