Take a peek around the Penn Memory Center, and you’ll see room after room filled with vital technology.
Over here, a multi-million-dollar MRI provides an incredibly detailed look at a living human brain. Over there, a pristine lab evaluates spinal fluid, providing researchers with invaluable data.
But in a small clinical evaluation room, an Alzheimer’s doctor faces his new patient and deploys the most powerful technology at his disposal:
“What’s a typical day?”
The simple question opens up the patient’s world to the doctor, presenting diagnostic and therapeutic goals, Dr. Jason Karlawish wrote in his latest Forbes column.
“The stories of what’s a typical day as told by the patient and by their informant provide a personalized narrative that opens up a precise assessment of the patient’s quality of life. A day that is busy, engaged and safe is arguably better than one that begins and ends with sitting on a couch before a TV, punctuated only by three meals, a snack and a nap,” he wrote.
“My profession is not simply engaged in diagnosing diseases of the brain. We’re dedicated to measuring a problem of the mind and to help patients and their families reconcile differences over what this problem is and how they are going to live with it.”