FC:AI - NotebookLM

Russ Read-Barrow shares how Google's NotebookLM became his AI-powered memory during cancer treatment—turning blood results, consultant letters, and voice notes into a personal knowledge base.

FC:AI TOOLS AND TIPS

Russ Read-Barrow

5/15/20252 min read

Fuck cancer. And fuck trying to remember what my oncologist said 14 letters ago.

I’m going to start by talking about the simplest, easiest AI tool I’ve set up so far—NotebookLM by Google. It’s free, fast to get going, and it just works.

NotebookLM is a private chatbot that only reads the documents you give it. No internet (unless you ask for it). No hallucinations. No guessing. No forgetting. It’s like giving yourself a photographic memory of everything you’ve lived through and forgotten.

Which is ideal, because:

I don’t read anything longer than half a page
I had two boxes of paperwork I never looked at and eventually incinerated (they’re now used by my daughter to store Beano comics)

Here’s what I’ve done with NotebookLM:

Uploaded blood results, scan reports, some consultant letters
Notes on treatments, gym intake, acupuncture
Audio files from phone conversations with drs and nurses (it handles those too)
It’s a factual, searchable record of everything I might need to refer back to.

I have then used it to:

Prepare notes to share with new consultants or nurses
Write a summary I can send to my gym coach, acupuncturist, insurer
Check what drugs I was on back in 2023
Create a timeline of my cancer journey
Even share a link to it for others to ask questions

You can even tell it the audience — "write a summary for my physio" — and it’ll do it with that audience in mind.

No need to learn prompting. Just give it files and ask questions.

And if you want something really creepy, it can turn whatever you give it into a podcast-style audio summary. Maybe not one for the health records... though actually...

The more you give it, the more useful it becomes. I’m four years in. A shitload has happened that I’ve forgotten or blocked out. This means I don’t have to think about it. And that suits me perfectly.

And hopefully, in a few years, when I’m on some amazing treatment and someone needs a quick history—or wants to check if I reacted badly to some random drug—they’ll have it all.

When I see my consultant now, I use this (and a couple of other tools) to prep a clean summary. No more wasted minutes while they stare at a screen for silent minutes and then ASK YOU to give them a summary of what's happened to date.

It’s free. It’s personal. It remembers more than I do. Give it a go.