Greetings, Dr Phil 🙂

I sort of understand a lot of what keeps doctors and medical techs from “sharing” with patients. What the medical profession needs to do often has to be done on a tight time budget. And I also expect that the “average” patient is more likely to misunderstand or start thinking the one minute helpful briefing they get qualifies them to second guess every little thing the professional is trying to do. I deal with that every day as a senior computer geek, and my work is far from life and death!

That said, as a somewhat non-average patient, I’d love to have better access to my own information. If it could be done in a way that minimized extra effort on the part of the medical staff, that would be ideal. For example, if there was a secure way for me to log in somewhere and download/request my own medical data, including scan results, I’d be right there checking out the pictures of my innards. Not because I really have any desire to second guess someone who has specialized education and years of experience: but because instead of my doctor picking up one of those plastic vertabrae things and saying “here’s where your owie is”, I could look at the real thing. The ability to see inside in three dimensions, to show slices and to distinguish/highlight/hide different densities is, to me, very cool. I’d probably spend far too much time playing with the data if I had a chance 🙂

By the way: nothing new really showed up on my CT scan. Arthritic/bony growths at (if I recall correctly) C4/C5 aggravating/inflaming the nerve that runs down my right arm. No disk involvement, so no real option for surgery according to my doc- just physio and painkillers when it flares up.

Re: the flu- thanks for your advice! I am pretty good at looking after myself that way, having suffered through more than my fair share of sick times. I have allergies (I had mild asthma as a kid), and have funky sinuses. When I get a tough virus, it usually follows that I end up with a bacterial sinus infection, and quite often end up with a sort of allergic reaction in my lungs, and then sometimes something like bronchitis. Netting it out, it took me from December 27th until January 30th to get back to “normal”. Stupid messed up immune system doesn’t know when its done….