Remembering

You never forget the ones you wrote up.

I was cleaning my study yesterday. Which involved getting rid of a lot of my old notes, research papers, patient notes (I use a shredder), articles. And I found some of my old case report abstracts, stuff I had presented at medical conferences over the last 3 years. But the surprising thing was, I clearly recalled the patients I saw, the details of their case and why it was challenging/rare enough that it warranted a paper.

Like Mr. H with a chordoid glioma and panhypopituitarism (less than 30 reported cases then).
Or Ms. A with pulmonary hypertension and SLE (unlike scleroderma, pulmonary hypertension doesn't occur as often in SLE).
Mr. K with West Nile viral acute flaccid paralysis (poor prognosis for recovery).
Mr. T with severe pulmonary hypertension from chronic pulmonary embolism.
Mr. E with central neurogenic hyperventilation from large cell lymphoma.

Unfortunately, because these were complex cases, usually that means the patients didn't do well (we wouldn't write up the simple, straightforward cases).
But yes; despite these being up to 3 years old, I do remember them clearly.