BECOMING YOUR OWN LEAD RESEARCHER IN HEALTHCARE

PEGGY LA CERRA, PHD, downloaded a health app to aggregate her medical records and was stunned to see the phrase "aortic atherosclerosis." What she did next is a helpful model for all of us.

- PEGGY LA CERRA

CERTAIN THAT AORTIC ATHEROSCLEROSIS must have been entered in error, I called the healthcare facility, informed a records technician that I’d never even been assessed for heart issues, and asked her to delete the diagnosis from my file. Not surprisingly, she told me that I’d need to discuss the issue with my primary care physician. I’d recently started going to a longevity expert for my annual physical, so I immediately called him and told him about this error. He asked if I’d had a chest x-ray in the past several years— apparently, if you have a calcified plaque in your aorta, this shows up on a chest film—and my blighted heart sank. I had been x-rayed after a bout of Covid. But how could it be that no one had bothered to inform me of this dire-sounding diagnosis? Did I have other health problems that I hadn’t been told about? How serious a condition is aortic atherosclerosis? What should I be doing about it? What I learned over the next few weeks convinced me to change the role I played on my healthcare team.

CURIOSITY CAN LEAD TO CURES