December 2022

Lori is here today with a chief complaint of dizziness and headache. At least that’s what my medical assistant tells me. But after practicing family medicine for almost twenty years, I’ve learned that there’s usually more to the story.

I recognize the expectation to match the story and physical exam to a reasonable diagnosis, especially one that the patient can trust. All in 20 minutes. No pressure at all!

Very early on a Sunday morning, my friend Marla called asking for help. She was in excruciating pain—bone metastases, as it later became clear, from her breast cancer. She’d been instructed to head to the emergency room and needed a ride.

For the fifteen years that I have been at my current job, I have held onto my patients’ stories. Tucked into special pockets in my heart, they would be brought out whenever their “owner” came in for an appointment, where the story would take on a new form, then be stored away again. There were stories of shame and heartbreak, stories of joy and triumph. People confessed their deepest fears, shared events never revealed, and confided fledgling hopes and dreams. These stories are signs of patient-physician trust and of sacred human-to-human connections.