Rod Stewart had it right with the title track of his '71 album: Every picture does tell a story.

When I have the chance to teach med students/residents about the value of doing home visits, I ask them to "read the walls," the pictures that people choose to hang on their walls, prop up against their books, or clutter their tables.

In a powerful, almost voyeuristic way, we learn so much about our patients: happier times (almost always 'happier' times), friends and family here and gone, memories being made, tribal unity, accomplishments.

These pictures remind us that the weak, frail, and dying person lying in the next room is so much more than the exhausting list of their diagnoses.

The 50-year-old man painfully walking from room to room, tethered to his life-sustaining oxygen, losing ground daily to his failing lungs and their uninvited cancer guest is --was--the young "player," a Playboy bunny on each arm, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, and the smiling squint of eyes that almost say "I dare you."

The 40-ish father blindsided by the lung cancer that declared itself by masquerading as a stroke is tossing from side to side in his bed right now, surrounded by a haze of cigarette smoke thick enough to obscure the big screen TV ten-feet away, but if we look through the smoke, we can see a funny photo of him backyard camping with his son last summer. In it, he's asleep with his head sticking out of the tent, too tall to fit, but there for his child. 

In the end, the final chapter of the stories told by the lineup of photos is uniformly predictable, and it reminds me that no matter what the medical record says, it is each one of us in those pictures.