Do you know Dilbert?... You surely will be knowing him.
He is the main character of a comic strip with eponymous name, which is set in a modern day office. The creator of Dilbert is Scott Adams, who created Dilbert—the cubicle-dwelling office worker in 1989. Dilbert is famous the world over, so is its creator.
A few years after creating Dilbert, Scott Adams contracted involuntary muscle spasms(having neurological origin)in his drawing hand. Doctors diagnosed it as focal dystonia, more commonly known as severe writer’s cramp; brought on by overuse of the hand. Instead of providing him a cure, the doctors suggested him to stop drawing and move on to a different profession. He started drawing with his left hand and tried to recover. One day, all of a sudden, his hand got back full function.
The problem resurfaced after ten years. This time he managed to control the problem. But in the spring of 2005, after some usual seasonal asthma and allergy, he lost his voice. The ENT specialists found nothing abnormal with the structure, but couldn’t nail down the possible cause.
For six months of living a life of gloom, Scott suddenly started wondering if his speech problem might have some connection with his hand.
At this stage he included Web technology in the scheme of things.
He coupled Voice with dystonia and typed “voice dystonia” into Google. He found a link to a video of a person. In no time, he concluded that, the person and he are suffering from the same disorder. That day he gathered valuable information by following some connecting links.
After a year of putting technology to his aid, he started using Google Alerts. He chose three keywords -- Dilbert, his name and spasmodic dysphonia. And whenever someone mentioned any of these keywords on the internet, he got an alert. Six months back he got an alert which told him of some obscure surgical procedure for fixing spasmodic dysphonia, developed in Japan. Although he didn’t go to Japan to get the surgery done, instead he told his doctor about the procedure cure he had read, and his doctor referred him to an expert at Stanford University, who in turn, performed a different kind of surgery. Within four months of the surgery, Scott’s voice was back to normal.
Scott Adams says Google search and Google Alerts helped him get back his voice.
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He is the main character of a comic strip with eponymous name, which is set in a modern day office. The creator of Dilbert is Scott Adams, who created Dilbert—the cubicle-dwelling office worker in 1989. Dilbert is famous the world over, so is its creator.
A few years after creating Dilbert, Scott Adams contracted involuntary muscle spasms(having neurological origin)in his drawing hand. Doctors diagnosed it as focal dystonia, more commonly known as severe writer’s cramp; brought on by overuse of the hand. Instead of providing him a cure, the doctors suggested him to stop drawing and move on to a different profession. He started drawing with his left hand and tried to recover. One day, all of a sudden, his hand got back full function.
The problem resurfaced after ten years. This time he managed to control the problem. But in the spring of 2005, after some usual seasonal asthma and allergy, he lost his voice. The ENT specialists found nothing abnormal with the structure, but couldn’t nail down the possible cause.
For six months of living a life of gloom, Scott suddenly started wondering if his speech problem might have some connection with his hand.
At this stage he included Web technology in the scheme of things.
He coupled Voice with dystonia and typed “voice dystonia” into Google. He found a link to a video of a person. In no time, he concluded that, the person and he are suffering from the same disorder. That day he gathered valuable information by following some connecting links.
After a year of putting technology to his aid, he started using Google Alerts. He chose three keywords -- Dilbert, his name and spasmodic dysphonia. And whenever someone mentioned any of these keywords on the internet, he got an alert. Six months back he got an alert which told him of some obscure surgical procedure for fixing spasmodic dysphonia, developed in Japan. Although he didn’t go to Japan to get the surgery done, instead he told his doctor about the procedure cure he had read, and his doctor referred him to an expert at Stanford University, who in turn, performed a different kind of surgery. Within four months of the surgery, Scott’s voice was back to normal.
Scott Adams says Google search and Google Alerts helped him get back his voice.