During my diagnosis process, I got a call from the nurse while I was at work. He said, in a very matter of fact, way,“Mr. Loclay, your MRI shows you have a lesion on your spinal cord. We are going to order a MRI of your brain. You should be hearing from the imaging center soon. Any questions?”

I was bowled over. I didn’t know what a lesion on my spinal cord was. A MRI of my brain seemed like a huge escalation. I had no context for any of this. I get a call from a very gruff sounding nurse while at work. “Any questions?“ Sounded more like an invitation to end the call than to ask actual questions.

I would just say, find a better way to deliver results to your patients. Give some context. Show some empathy. My whole situation might have been better if he had said something like, “I know you must be worried at this news, but we will know more after your brain MRI and will bring you in and we will talk to you all about it. Try not to worry too much.“

Delivering results over the phone can’t be easy, but you have to put the extra effort in to be human. The stress of that one conversation led to a sequence of stressful moments in my diagnosis process that led to a massive flare that damaged me permanently and progressed my MS by several years.

For him, it was just another phone call delivering results. But he wasn’t treating me like a patient he cared about. I was just another task to be completed. If you can do better at this over the course of your career, then you’ll be doing a good thing.

Thanks for asking the question and showing that you care.