Reports
I like the digital world, particularly as it relates to medicine. I can make appointments, ask questions, get reminders, basically stay in touch. Where it falls a little short, oddly enough, is when it gives me access to my reports for blood work, scans, MRI’s, and sonograms. There’s a lot of information, and I like to read it. Unfortunately, I don’t really know what I’m reading. So, to overcome that I go searching, because I’m curious and like knowing things.
But that’s not always a good idea when it comes to medicine. Recently, the report for an echo-cardiogram was uploaded to my portal. I read it. I searched the terms. None of them sounded good. My anxiety rose. Then, I got a call from the nurse, who reported that the doctor said my echo looked good. It was then I realized what I was seeing in the report was simply the description of the heart of a 77-year-old man, and it was what my doctor expected to see. And it looked good. I quit worrying.
I’m saying all this because yesterday I got the report of my recent CT Scan that covered everything from my nose to my toes as they checked on my aneurysm repair, which the doctor said was good. But reading all the other things going on inside my body gave me a start, because a lot had apparently changed since the January scan. I searched a little then stopped and decided on another course. I’ll simple go to the portal, send a message to my doctor and ask if there was anything of concern in the report, Because maybe all I’m seeing in the report are my aging insides, roughly akin to my aging, sagging, weathered outside. And maybe I don’t need to do anything at all except keep on living.