Not long ago, I saw a patient whose disease was, by all clinical measures, under control.
Her cystoscopy was clear. She was completing therapy as planned. There were no complications that would raise concern.
At the end of the visit, I asked how she was doing. She said, "I'm fine."
It wasn't until we were wrapping up that she added, almost as an afterthought, that she had stopped going out to dinner with her friends as often as she used to -- the unpredictability of her voiding symptoms made it too stressful. She didn't want to explain them to anyone, so she simply stayed home.
Nothing about that would have shown up in her chart. And it wasn't something she planned to bring up.
