Keeping Medical Records

I once met a woman who was diagnosed with breast cancer seven years after she had first had the disease. Her new doctors wanted to see her old medical records so that they could determine if this was a new cancer or a recurrence of her first breast cancer. I think they also wanted to know what chemotherapy treatment she had had.

But guess what? When she contacted the hospital where she had been treated, her records were nowhere to be found.

This story bothers me because I have not kept a complete copy of my medical chart. But I know a number of cancer patients who do. They bring their charts with them to appointments, which is especially helpful if you are seeing more than one doctor and even more so if your doctors are not all at the same hospital or cancer center.

My chart is now three volumes thick, and I don’t think I want to go back and get copies of the entire thing. But I am resolved to keep a complete copy going forward.

@ Jeanne Sather 2006