virus and doctor Google.

I seem to be coming down with a viral something, my tolerance for cold has suddenly decreased and I am feeling swollen lymph nodes around my neck, like I usually do just before I get sick with an upper respiratory illness.  Last night, as usual, my heels hurt, and I went to dunk them in cold water, which is a cure for both heel pad pain and restless legs.  Usually I sleep very well after my cold feet bath, but last night I got shivers and chills, and I stopped right away, putting several layers of clothes and socks on, and slept a bit uncomfortably because it still felt like the room was too cold.  The thermostat is in my parents' room and hence I can't just get up and adjust the temperature, but I do have a small electric heater which I turned on.  It felt like 14 degrees Celsius.  


Anyway, this morning I took a hot shower for a change, and I warmed up fully, now I am comfortably warm under the covers but still feeling achey and tired.  I think it is the lack of proper sleep.  I did a google search for viral illness in the third trimester, just for fun, and look what came up:  a whole bunch of sites that are written in such a way as to scare the crap out of any pregnant woman adventurous enough to google viral illness in pregnancy.  Here is a sample:


"The degree to which a fetus will be affected by an illness depends upon the type and severity of the sickness. Viral infections (rubella, influenza, viral hepatitis etc.), heart/vascular diseases, arterial hypertension, kidney failure, hormonal/metabolic disorders (diabetes mellitus), vaginal infections etc. can seriously damage the fetus, mother or both".  


And so on.  Fun times.  The truth is that the overwhelming majority of simple colds in pregnancy do not affect the fetus at all, and hardly affect the mother other than the usual nuisance of stuffy nose/sore throat, but hey, that information is nowhere on the web.  Only scary stuff that is probably meant to protect the writer against eventual lawsuits regarding not having covered in sufficient grave tones all possibilities, however remote.  I mean c'mon, parvovirus b19 is bad, but how much more often is the common adenovirus in the run-of-the-mill pregnant woman with the sniffles.  PERSPECTIVE IS KEY and that is exactly what doctor Google is lacking, as opposed to a real flesh doctor with common sense.  Grrrr!