I sit down to look through your chart, mentally preparing myself to sift through clinical variables for hours, amalgamating them with those of other patients and hoping something meaningful would arise. At the time, it seems mundane, but I count on it to provide useful data in the name of clinical research. But then, I get distracted. I start looking through your notes; I can’t stop.
I feel like, in fragments, I know you: your profession, the names of family members who accompany you to every visit, where you travel, how you like to spend your time. I know the exact moment where your life changed after reading a single word: malignant. In 11-point Helvetica, I trace your fear from the perspective of your nurses and physicians — your concern about who will take care of your kids, the testing of your faith, your refusal and then your acceptance of your mortality.
Some diseases knock before entering, but yours shattered the door. It was merciless. And yet, in every note, I saw how you kept showing up to each appointment, each scan, each physical therapy session. You ceased to relent on this fragile rehearsal of hope. As I read further about your battle with glioblastoma that raged on in your mind as much as in the clinic or OR, I can’t help feeling like an intruder — an outsider looking in. You never knew me and likely never will, yet in minutes, I discovered so much about your life.
I did not appreciate the intimacy of medical records. No doubt, they missed much. I still wonder what must it have felt like to find out? How can anyone accept that an entire life ahead of them was stolen? But in a way, they give us a keyhole to peer into a life. Oftentimes, we look through them, extract what we need, and hit the ‘X.’ Rarely do we take the time to stop ourselves and ask, outside of all the medicine, who is this person?
Reading your record made me more aware of how easily clinical distance can become routine. In the pursuit of efficiency, it’s easy to forget that each entry is a real life unfolding in real time. As I continue my training, I hope to carry this awareness forward: to read just a little more carefully, think a little more deliberately, to remember that the story in between the lines is anything but mundane.
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