Sarajane Rodgers is a second-year neuropsychology postdoctoral fellow at Geisinger Medical Center in central Pennsylvania. While she sees patients with a variety of conditions in several settings, she most enjoys working with inpatients who have altered consciousness. In addition to her postdoc, she is doing a remote Master of Public Health at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and hopes to contribute to the world of global health. Her short story “Time Machine” appeared in the Spring 2023 Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine
In theory, whenever we go to the doctor, most of us want to hear “good news.” The test is negative. You don’t have ___. Your results are inconsistent with ___. There are times where we take that in and walk away with an emotional weight removed. Other times, we are left with a void. The diagnosis we thought we could hang a hat on is taken away. Now where do we put our hat?
In the field of neuropsychology, being able to tell someone they are cognitively intact, or what has been noticed is normal and a sign of healthy aging, is a message that providers like to deliver. Anxiety and depression are two other contributors that are described as “modifiable factors,” and thus fall into the ‘good news’ category.
That is always preferable when compared to giving a dementia diagnosis as described in my fictional short story “Time Machine.” At the same time, the symptoms that brought the patient to the office in the first place don’t just disappear for many people when they are given good news. The keys keep playing hide-and-seek as do the words sought for in conversation.
To think that the issues end with a negative test is a bit naïve, but that is a conclusion providers frequently come to. In reality, providers are more than detectives trying to piece together clues, and patients are more than just a mystery waiting to be solved. As writer Karen Jahn described in “My Heart is in My Hands,” (Spring 2015 Intima) getting news from a provider that is considered good can stir up a lot of emotions. Rather than the end of a journey, in some ways, it is a start of one.—Sarajane Rodgers
Sarajane Rodgers is a second-year neuropsychology postdoctoral fellow at Geisinger Medical Center in central Pennsylvania. While she sees patients with a variety of conditions in several settings, she most enjoys working with inpatients who have altered consciousness. In addition to her postdoc, she is doing a remote Master of Public Health at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and hopes to contribute to the world of global health. Her short story “Time Machine” appeared in the Spring 2023 Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine