Patient

Tilly Rose is an author and a patient advocate. She wrote a powerful story about being patient and a patient. 

Be Patient is an eye-opening account of her being a seriously ill patient without a diagnosis. That should be a must-read book for all medical students and doctors. Every year, there are cases with mysterious or unexplained symptoms leading to so-called medical gaslighting – "it's all in your head."

What makes the situation worse is the undefined illness that won't fit in one particular medical specialty. Now that each specialist is often interested in looking at his or her discipline only, Tilly Rose turned out being lost in a barren landscape or no-man's-land. 

"I imagine taking a photograph of my whole body and cutting it up into horizontal strips, separating all the different parts of me," Tilly Rose concluded. "The doctor holding the photo of my heads has no idea what my feet look like. I am trapped in a system that relies on putting people in boxes. Bodies aren't made for boxes."

To stop this vicious cycle of losing sight of our patients, here is my simple rule: Piece the photograph back together and learn to read the whole picture. Not a separate box for each strip.