{"id":784,"date":"2026-08-04T11:12:54","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T16:12:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/searchingwithin.com\/wordpress\/?p=784"},"modified":"2026-08-04T11:16:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T16:16:08","slug":"getting-me-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/searchingwithin.com\/wordpress\/?p=784","title":{"rendered":"Getting Me Right"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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In December, I raised two errors in my medical records. The After Visit Summary said I was a year younger than I was. And my diagnosis was listed as bipolar 1 instead of bipolar 2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Different flavors of the same underlying issue: being documented incorrectly. But not equally serious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Diagnosis Piece<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Bipolar 1 and bipolar 2 are not typo-adjacent. They are clinically distinct conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My layperson understanding of Bipolar 1 includes things like: thinking you’re God, hallucinating, ending up on a rooftop thinking you can fly. The Richard Gere movie Mr. Jones captures the picture pretty well. Bipolar 1 involves full manic episodes, sometimes with psychosis, sometimes requiring hospitalization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have never had any of those experiences. As a person (not a medical professional), I know I am not Bipolar 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bipolar 2 lives in hypomania and depression. When I am hypomanic, I recognize the pattern. High energy underneath everything. Talking fast. High creativity. Sleeping very little. Overspending. Promiscuity. Changes in appetite. Less severe than full mania. Hypo, as in less than. I don’t lose contact with reality. But it’s still bipolar. And the depressive episodes carry their own weight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The treatment approaches for the two overlap but are not identical. Some antidepressants that a bipolar 2 patient tolerates could trigger mania in a bipolar 1 patient. Providers need to know which one they are managing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am bipolar 2. That has always been my diagnosis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How the Error Got There<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

At some point in my history of medical records, someone changed the diagnosis from bipolar 2 to bipolar 1. A typo, a misclick, a moment of distraction. I don’t know who or when. I could probably trace it back through old summaries, but that part doesn’t matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What matters is that the change wasn’t my current provider. He inherited the error from whichever chart he received. His template then pulled the wrong diagnosis forward, session after session, without anyone noticing. That’s the thing about template systems: they don’t verify. They repeat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim didn’t introduce the error. Tim is the one who corrected it once I raised the flag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What It Feels Like to Be Documented Incorrectly<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For months, when I looked at my AVS after each session, I saw a version of me that wasn’t me. Wrong age. Wrong diagnosis. A quiet, ongoing misrepresentation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not the kind of thing you can complain loudly about. It’s paperwork. It’s a template pull. It’s not personal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Except it is personal. Because the record is the thing that follows me forward. The record is what other clinicians see when they look up my chart. The record is the version of me that persists past the hour we spent together in the office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being documented incorrectly, session after session, is a form of quiet erasure. Not intentional. But real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Correction and What It Meant<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The diagnosis eventually got fixed. That mattered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim took an extra step to ask me to send a screenshot, in order to know exactly what I was seeing. It mattered not because Tim clicked a button. Everyone with template-editing access can click a button. It mattered because Tim paid attention to the raised flag, went in, remembered to look, made the change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The correction was a small act of being heard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Attention Looks Like<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I think this is part of why the birthday email I sent was so pointed about the AVS template<\/p>\n\n\n\n