Every Patient Tells a Story: Medical Mysteries and the Art of Diagnosis Book

I didn't think it was possible for a book about medical problems to bore me. I now know that it's possible. Yep, Every Patient Tells a Story managed to bore me. Boredom may not be an illness, but in this review, equating the two seems appropriate. I'm not starting with a potpourri of baffling symptoms and trying to arrive at a diagnosis. I have the diagnosis: boredom -- so my task is to identify the causes.

Dr. Lisa Sanders' work reminds me of a medical file in that it's a disorganized collection of pages rather than a logically arranged, tightly knit book. Like patients' medical records, it is packed with reiterative observations, and it is a mixture of the useful and the useless. Do readers really need to know that this doc wears a tie or that doc has wavy hair or another one is tall and thin? You get the picture, folks -- the picture that you weren't looking for. The flawed organization and unnecessary details might, however, be dismissed if what is missing from the book weren't stories. And I mean STORIES, not case studies, not accounts told from a doctor's point of view. Every BODY tells a story -- Dr. Sanders, you clearly want the medical community and your audience to recognize the importance of using various methods and tools to read and interpret those "stories." What happened to "every patient TELLS a story"? Granted, not always truthful, not always complete, but a story. Why, Dr. Sanders, don't we get the "stories" of the patients who are used to illustrate points -- stories like the ONE story in your book, the one that doesn't appear until the "Afterword"? It's the story of your sister who died at forty-two; and it's your story and the story of your other sisters and the story of the convergence of medicine, mystery, and memories. It was the cure for boredom that unfortunately came only after the "patient died."