Mom Had Breast Cancer. I Drowned in Medical Research. 🥰
Mom's diagnosis hit hard. Wanted to understand everything. Started reading every medical paper, treatment guideline, clinical study I could find. Overwhelming. Hundreds of pages of dense medical jargon. Couldn't tell what mattered. THE RESEARCH OVERLOAD Downloaded 40+ papers from PubMed. Bookmarked another 30 articles. Printed some. Lost track of what I'd already read. Doctor appointments: "Have you read about treatment X?" No idea. Maybe? I'd read so much it blurred together. Couldn't remember which study said what. Couldn't compare findings across papers. Just drowning in information without understanding. THE SUMMARIZER I BUILT Every paper, report, treatment guide goes into folder. Workflow processes automatically. First pass extracts key information. Study type, sample size, main findings, limitations, author conclusions. Second pass generates plain-English summary. What did this study actually find? What are the important takeaways? What questions should I ask the doctor about this? Everything searchable. "What studies mention immunotherapy?" Instant answer. Creates comparison views. Multiple studies on same treatment side by side. Easier to see consensus versus outliers. THE INFORMED ADVOCACY Before: Drowning in research, couldn't retain it, felt helpless, couldn't advocate effectively. After: Summaries I could actually understand, questions prepared for appointments, felt like a partner in her care. One summary helped me ask about a treatment option her oncologist hadn't mentioned. Turned out to be a good fit for her situation. Mom is in remission now. Research didn't cure her. Doctors did. But being informed made me a better advocate during the scariest time of her life. The summarization struggles with highly technical papers. Some medical jargon too specialized. But captures enough to know if a paper is relevant. This is the workflow json i want to share