Authors

  1. Holt, Mark W. MD

Article Content

MAYDAY! MAYDAY! WI-FI attack! WI-FI attack! Does professional jealously have no bounds? I finally get my health care house in order and am steamrolling my way to Hollywood and beyond when the evil Dr. Phil decides to spam my online health care advice column, Dr. TROT's HealthBlog (or DTHB for short). Why can we not exist as cyberspace health care soul mates? My Web line focuses totally on integrated health care, while Dr. P chooses psychobabble disguised as life skills.

 

But I will not say one negative word about Dr. Phil. He is the one muddying my Blog with the cyber version of SARS-the bipolar blocker-a vicious virus that changes frequencies and makes Swiss cheese out of any firewall known to man or hard drive.

 

So how did I go from medical outcast to health care cyber sage? To put it bluntly, I owe it all to Ted Turner. Fortunately, Teddy loves to travel on Greyhound and, through a stroke of sheer genius, he was my seat mate on the Greyhound taking me back to the TROT compound. We started chatting when I complimented him on the intertwined snake and weasel tattoo on his left forearm that had these elaborate letters that were difficult to read until we went through a tunnel and-WOW!-glowing in the dark was the simple inscription "AOL SUCKS." So I ask him if he had a candid opinion about AOL. He got a very dark look in his eyes and asked me if I know anything about providing medical advice on the Internet. So the next thing I know, Teddy has signed me up to be the health care guru of Teddy's new Internet empire-TTOL-yes, that is Ted Turner OnLine.

 

One thing I can say about Teddy-he moves fast. Before I could blink twice, he had commandeered the Greyhound and was heading for Hollywood. Meanwhile, he hands me a laptop and tells me to start talking-in the professional sense of the word. I look at the screen and DTHB has ten people lined up wanting to talk to me. I know I am a popular guy, but this is ridiculous! I look at Teddy, or rather the back of his head, as he put the Greyhound into fifth gear, and asked him, point blank: Where did all these hits come from? How long has TTOL been in business? Teddy turns around and says with a little leer on his lips: "Five minutes" Five minutes! Nobody gets throughput like this five minutes after flipping the switch. Teddy looks back and grins one more time, "You can thank Dr. Phil for our startup, Dr. T."

 

Well, to make a long story very short, besides using an unauthorized WI-FI frequency, Teddy had hacked into Dr. Phil's Web site and essentially diverted all of his Web traffic to TTOL's medical advice line.

 

I must tell you that I got very good very quickly at producing high-quality psychobabble. Self-control starts with knowing your own boundaries; and only you can control your own behavior, thoughts, and words; while self esteem and happiness are by-products of effective self-control and self-management. WOW! Even I have to marvel at how quickly I learned the lingo. And, I can also understand how Dr. Phil might be hacked off at how easily we hijacked his cyber clients, as Teddy so discreetly put it (and Teddy has promised me that, as soon as he figures out how to hack into WebMD, that I will have a "plethora" of actual virtual medical cyber clients). Woo pee ti yeah! (At this point, I will not discriminate against any question, and I judge my new clients only by the quality of their MasterCard credit limit.) While I now understand a little bit about the anger Dr. Phil must feel inside his rather doughy physique, I think that jamming my WI-FI network can be called overreaction in the best nonjudgmental sense of the word.

 

Now, I have to admit that Teddy's plans for Dr. TROT's HealthBlog seemed a little grandiose, especially since, as a pediatrician, I feel a little uncomfortable answering questions from 60-year-old women asking, "Will Viagra help cool off my hot flashes?" When I expressed these professional reservations to Teddy, he turned to me and grinned, "When in doubt, Google, baby, Google." I must also admit that Teddy's Internet arrogance made me even more antsy when I saw the Springer for Prez button pinned to Teddy's navel.

 

However, I have to say that I was getting very comfortable with the anonymous outreach and Web-laced professional advice I was able to provide in a way that was totally hands free and cheerily sterile. As our Greyhound charged like a diesel steed into the night, my reverent thoughts of joining the Hollywood Walk of Fame were roughly halted as Teddy got up from the driver's seat and turned toward us: "Ladies and gentlemen, I have to confess, for all of my good intentions, I am not Ted Turner. You are onboard with Art Bell. And we are officially on cruise control West of the Rockies."