NEXT AVENUE - SPECIAL SECTION
The Perils of Medical Portals By Jill Smolowe
When an email from a local medical practice landed with the subject head "Your test results are available," I ignored it. I knew these were the results of blood tests a neurologist had ordered to find an explanation for the callous-like sensations I've been experiencing on the bottoms of my feet. I also knew that whatever these labs had found, I was unlikely to understand either the numbers or the medical lingo. Better to let the results sit unopened until I met again with the neurologist in three weeks, at which time he could interpret for me.
new or unidentified condition can find themselves chasing down rabbit holes of needless distress. Reluctantly, I accessed my blood lab results. Yep, there was a particular bit of medical jargon I'd never come across before. Yep, I plugged the term into Google search. Yep, I scared the bejesus out of myself.
This one little phrase, it turned out, was linked to only one condition. A blood cancer.
Freaked out, I rushed the labs over to my internist's office and asked the receptionist to ask my doctor if I needed to consult a specialist. A half hour later the phone rang. "He wants you to see a hematologist," she said. [Waiting for my appointment], I had eleven days to wade through before I could learn what any of this meant. I would not wish those eleven days on anybody. They were filled with worry, speculation, dark fantasy and (stupid!) time spent combing the internet for more information. When I met with the hematologist, he pronounced the lab results "Weird," and said that while he was going to order more blood tests, he was "not concerned." I recently got the new results. The red flag reading was still there, but it had shrunk from a tiny fractional number to what the hematologist called a "smudge." He wanted me to come back in four to six months to repeat the tests so we can "keep an eye" on the situation.
I also knew that whatever these labs had found, I was unlikely to understand either the numbers or the medical lingo.
Medical portals feature test results laced with often scary-sounding jargon impenetrable to a layperson. While the ability to track an ongoing condition can be useful to patients who understand what they're looking at, those who, like me, are dealing with a
I'm fine with that. In the meantime, I plan to keep my eyes off any more medical portals.
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