I Didn't Know MyChart Was Keeping Receipts

The longer you live in the healthcare world, the more random things you learn that nobody ever bothered to tell you.

Some of them are useful.

Some of them are terrifying.

And some of them make you stop mid-sentence and think...

*"Wait... WHAT?"*

This was one of those.

A few years ago, I treated MyChart exactly like I treated texting.

"Hi! Just wanted to check in..."

"I don't know if this matters, but..."

"Sorry to bother you..."

"I've probably convinced myself I'm dying again, but..."

You know... casual.

Then one day I learned that every MyChart message becomes part of your medical record.

Excuse me?

You mean there's a permanent record somewhere of me apologizing seventeen times before asking an actual question?

Fantastic.

Some poor doctor fifty years from now is going to think my greatest medical condition was chronic overuse of ellipses.

But after I got over the initial panic, I realized something.

This is actually a really good thing.

Because here's what I've learned after spending the last few years living in hospitals, reading medical records, and trying to remember approximately eight million details...

Our memories are terrible.

Especially when we're scared.

Ask me what happened on a random Tuesday three months ago, and I've got nothing.

Ask me what Paul's oxygen saturation was at 2:14 a.m. during a hospital admission in Tampa?

Oddly enough... I might remember.

Trauma is weird.

The little details blur together.

Appointments start to overlap.

You can't remember if the cough started before the medication change or after.

Was it Tuesday?

Was it two Tuesdays ago?

Was it before the PET scan?

Everything starts melting together.

That's why I've become a much bigger fan of MyChart messages than I ever expected.

Not because they're convenient.

Because they leave breadcrumbs.

They create a timeline.

They document symptoms while they're actually happening instead of six weeks later when you're trying to reconstruct the story from memory and caffeine.

I've started thinking of MyChart less like texting and more like writing little journal entries for Future Me.

Future Me is exhausted.

Future Me appreciates the receipts.

Now, I don't mean every message needs to read like it was prepared by a team of attorneys.

Please don't lose your personality.

Healthcare has enough sterile language already.

But I've learned to slow down for about thirty seconds before I hit "Send."

Did I explain what changed?

Did I include when it started?

Did I say what we've already tried?

Would this make sense to someone reading it six months from now?

Because that's the thing...

Someone *might*.

And while we're talking about things nobody tells you, here's another one.

If you've given someone proxy access to your MyChart account—like your spouse, your adult child, or another caregiver—what they can see depends on the permissions you've set up and how your health system handles proxy access.

It's not something to be afraid of.

It's just something worth knowing.

Kind of like the fact that your MyChart messages aren't disappearing into the internet.

They're becoming part of your story.

And if there's one thing caregiving has taught me, it's that details matter.

Sometimes the sentence you almost didn't send ends up being the missing piece that explains everything later.

Funny how that works.

The Feral Truth: These days I write MyChart messages the same way I write emails to myself: assuming Future Kari is going to need all the details because Present Kari is absolutely not going to remember them.