RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Charting Phelan's ‘To Suffer a Sea Change’ JF Medical Humanities JO J Med Humanit FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and Institute of Medical Ethics SP 121 OP 127 DO 10.1136/medhum-2015-010669 VO 41 IS 2 A1 Megan Winkelman A1 Jacqueline Ng A1 Audrey Shafer YR 2015 UL http://mh.bmj.com/content/41/2/121.abstract AB Physicians and healthcare workers usually perceive their medical record entries as documentation rather than construction. In the following article, we extract a medical record from a narrative, Peggy Phelan's pathography of glaucoma, ‘To Suffer a Sea Change’. From information about encounters described by Phelan, an ophthalmologist reconstructs progress notes similar to those that would be key to a glaucoma patient's medical record. Rather than condemning the arcane pointilism of the medical record as a poverty of language, or isolating the pathography as an academic text, we hope to instead appreciate what their collaborative dialogue offers the study of disease. While the points of divergence between these texts will demonstrate failures in communication, they will also unearth an enriched dialogue.