Peril or Protection
How Biotech Companies can apply Narrative Medicine
I woke up, slowly and then sort of all at once. Groggy. Unclear. The TV was loud across the room. Sirens. I tried to get my bearings. Why was my throat so dry? Why did I feel pinned to the bed? As I gained my senses I started to piece things together. I was in the hospital. Not in the room I'd been in for days at a time, but one with three beds side by side. A different unit? There were thin curtains separating us but I couldn't see another human.
I tried to yell out.
There was a tube down my throat.
My IV pole full of bags and timers and beeping.
The bed damp beneath me.
What had happened?
Why couldn't I remember?
Why was I alone?
My husband, he'd been there. In the last moments I remembered, in another hospital room, I'd been awake and he'd been beside me.
The TV - what were they saying? The death toll, it was mounting. Where were they? In Las Vegas. There'd been a shooting, during a concert, during the same moments in which my body was fighting alone to stay alive.
A thousand questions raced through my head but all I could feel was fear. Where was my phone? Where was the nurse? My call button? My husband? What had happened? Was I going to be ok? Was I going to be.... me?
Suddenly without warning I was out again, gone into a space I can only describe as unavailable. I couldn't reach anyone or anything, and nobody could hear or reach me. I was alone, but it didn't hurt. It was quiet and warm.
The next time I opened my eyes I saw the nurse. She urged me not to speak. I had to go to the bathroom. She pointed to the catheter I didn't know had been inserted. I motioned for my pen. I wrote husband? Her response - we didn't know who to call.
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This very real set of memories, it doesn’t share anything “clinical” from a doctors point of view and it might even be a waste of time. But this one isolated incident to me was but a very bold bullet point in a long list of medical traumas. It talked about how one moment changed the rest of my life.
Narrative medicine is magic. It connects powerful narrative skills with radical listening to deliver healthcare that puts the patients voice front and center, and asks the providers to slow down just a little, to recognize, value and improve the care they give patients.
When I worked in biotech, we often needed patients to summarize years of their diagnostic odyssey or journey to treatment in just a few minutes, and I hear so many of them desperate to share every detail. What if the details don't matter so much? What if it’s about how they felt? What if it’s just one moment that changed all the rest of the moments?
Imagine the impact that would leave on you and your staff. Imagine going back to work after listening to this patient, to me, and thinking about my story. About how a medication called Remicade changed my future but how the scariest moment of my life changed everything else.
Are you ready for me to help your patients tell their stories?