I've got about 50-100 pages of medical documents per year. Blood results, scan reports, consultant letters, pathology reports, treatment plans. After a few years of this, it's an absolute mountain. And I can't remember shit because, well, chemo brain.
Enter: NotebookLM. Google's tool that lets you upload documents and then ask them questions. It's become my medical memory.
What It Does
You upload PDFs, images, text files—medical records, really. Then you can:
- Ask questions. "What did my bilirubin count show in March?" NotebookLM searches through 100 pages and tells you.
- Get summaries. "Give me a timeline of my treatment changes." It builds one from the documents.
- Create audio summaries. This is the creepy but genuinely useful part: it can turn your documents into a podcast-style audio summary that you can listen to while driving or doing the washing up.
- Build sources. Every answer comes with references to which documents it used, so you can verify it's actually correct.
The referencing part is critical. NotebookLM isn't perfect (see my next post), but at least it tells you where it got the information from.
Why This Actually Works for Cancer
Managing your medical care with cancer means managing a ridiculous amount of information. Your consultants are brilliant. Your nurses are brilliant. But they're also not you, and they don't see the patterns you see.
Here's what I use it for:
Preparing for appointments. Before I see my oncologist, I'll ask NotebookLM: "What have my PSA levels done over the last six months?" or "List all the side effects I've reported and when." I go into appointments informed, which means better conversations and better decisions.
Explaining status to family. When my mum asks how things are progressing, I don't want to recite from memory (which is shit). I ask NotebookLM to summarise, and then I actually know what I'm talking about. It's also useful for briefing family members before appointments they're attending.
Spotting patterns. Neuropathy, fatigue, gut issues—they come and go. Are they getting worse? Better? Is there a cycle to them? NotebookLM can tell you if you ask the right questions. Your chemo brain probably can't.
Looking back at decisions. Months later, you'll wonder why you chose a particular treatment path or dosage adjustment. The reason is probably written down somewhere in 80 pages of documents. NotebookLM finds it.
The Podcast Feature
There's a thing called "Audio Overview" which is either brilliant or deeply strange, depending on your mood.
You upload your documents. NotebookLM generates an audio file where two AI hosts discuss your medical records like it's a podcast. It sounds natural. It's weird as hell. But it means you can listen to summaries of your own medical history while doing something else, and your brain—fractured from treatment—can actually absorb it in a different way than reading.
I'm not going to pretend this isn't creepy. It is. But it also works.
Building Your Archive
The key to making this useful is actually building the archive in the first place. Strategies:
- Screenshot everything. If your consultant sends an email with results, screenshot it. If you get a letter, photograph it. Build the archive as you go, not retroactively.
- Organise by category. Create folders: blood tests, scans, letters, pathology. It makes searching easier.
- Add context notes. When you upload a document, add a one-line note explaining what it is. NotebookLM uses this to understand the documents better.
- Regular uploads. Don't let it pile up. Upload new documents monthly.
What It Can't Do
NotebookLM is not a diagnosis tool. It won't tell you what you have or what treatment you need. It's not a substitute for your medical team. It's a memory tool. A pattern-spotting tool. A way to manage information that's otherwise overwhelming.
Also: it's a Google product, which means your medical data is going somewhere. If that worries you, you might want to think carefully about this one.
Why It Matters
I've been living with cancer for years. I've had dozens of appointments, hundreds of tests, thousands of pages of documentation. And somewhere in all that documentation is the actual story of what's happening to my body and what we're trying to do about it.
Without a tool like NotebookLM, that story lives in the heads of six different consultants and in the pages of my medical records, and it's nowhere accessible to me. With it, I can ask questions and get answers. I can prepare better. I can understand my own care better.
And on a day when I'm too tired or too brain-fogged to think straight, I can just ask my AI assistant to tell me what's happening. Because sometimes that's what you need.
Try it. Build your archive. Ask it questions. See what you learn about your own medical story.