What happens if, for example, you give wrong advice and someone ends up dead? A bit of hyperbole but not outside the realm of possibilities considering what takes place here on BL.
doctors/hospitals/nurses etc. are responsible for accidental deaths every day. despite what people seem to think, doctors DON'T KNOW
EVERYTHING. Doctors are practicing medicine their entire careers - that is why they open businesses called "practices," not "I'm completely positive what's wrong with everybody, INC."
A doctor's job is to gather symptoms from a patient from the things a patient tells them (which often times are skewed because of many different reasons, people being shy, embarassed, drug use, stubbornness, etc) and the physical/organic symptoms that the doctor can see and or test.
Being that this doctor can't see you (the forum question-asker), it takes away half of his ability to be able to accurately assess the situation at hand. However, he/she can give you the best answer from the information they've been given.
WHICH MEANS: even though this person is a doctor, people who are asking questions here should be wise enough to
take the answers with a grain of salt (and a shot of tequila......just kiddin'). There are reasons that people in real life go to see different doctors to get second opinions.
It is the question-askers choice to choose to follow the advice given by the doctor (djsim, I mean absolutely no offense by any of this; I have seen your posts and can see that it is likely you are quite intelligent, therefore I assume you'd agree with what I am saying here...)
also, to those bitching that their question hasn't been answered right away...pretty sure this person has better things to do than sit like a pouncing cat on his keyboard just waiting and salivating to answer every single one of your questions. you should be lucky that someone is offering to answer, weather it be 2 hours or 2 weeks later.
overall, if you think you truly have an emergency health situation in your hands, GO TO THE REAL LIFE DOCTOR.