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Another member of my health team, Endre Papp, massage therapist, Making the best use of an engineer and designer’s approach to bodywork. Good for what ails me. Read More
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I want to be a better CEO of my health and health team. Better at learning, managing, leading, and deciding. Most of us are only fair at any of it. Few are good at all of it. And our lives depend on them all. Let’s explore this further together in future podcasts. I encourage you to share your questions and thoughts with me.
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You’re gonna love hearing from Morgan Gleason, already a veteran advocate after making a YouTube video when she was 15 that went viral about her frustrations as a patient in the hospital. Welcome to this fifth in a series about Young Adults with Complex Medical Conditions Transitioning from Pediatric to Adult Medical Care. Let’s jump right in!
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Welcome to the Health Hats podcast series about young adults transitioning from pediatric to adult medical care. In this series, I interview young adults with complex medical conditions, their parent or guardians, point-of-care clinicians caring for these young adults, and whoever else I find of interest in this fascinating, frustrating, heart-breaking, and inspiring world.
This second podcast of the series is with Sara Lorraine Snyder, a fine, eloquent, young woman who has lived her entire life with chronic medical issues. She’s learning to drive her own healthcare and manage the transition to adult medical care.
“If you were playing with the team for football or whatever and then they come you come in the next practice and half of your team is completely new people that you don’t even know and then you don’t know how to effectively work with that team so that in the end of the day you can win or like achieve, whatever you need to.” Sara Lorraine Snyder
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We’re going somewhere with our best health journey. Destination: Personal health goals. If you’re well, stay well. If you’re acutely ill, get over it. If you’re chronically ill or dying, live the best life possible. There’s a difference between medical and personal health goals. Onward. Read More
When my son, Mike, was dying I knew I needed help supporting Mike AND survive and thrive myself. I went shopping for a counselor. No surprise to you – I am not an easy patient. But I was willing to do the work. My shopping eventually led me to three counselors. The first, a friend highly recommended. This friend had survived leukemia with several years of chemo, stem cell transplant and heart surgery. His mental and spiritual health were shaken. I could see that this counselor had really helped him. I made an appointment. The guy popped Altoids Curiously Strong Peppermints the whole time. To keep himself awake? No go. Still shopping. The next counselor I knew from work. She was on my providers’ council. She asked questions. I answered. How did I feel…? I didn’t need talk therapy. I had family and friends. I needed a roadmap. How do I manage myself? The third counselor spent 5 minutes asking me about diet, sleep, exercise, pooping, my family, transportation. You have to take care of the basics to manage grief. Then he said, there’s stress you can manage and stress you can’t. Grief is stress that’s hard to manage. There it is. It’s not going away. Now tell me your top two stresses in your life right now. That was easy. On top – My mother. (That’s another story for another day). Tell me more. I told him more, another 10 minutes. Then he gave me three things to try to help manage the stress with Ma. I spent 45 minutes of the allotted hour with him! He was a keeper. I tried all three recommendations with Ma. I could pull off two. Rapidly less stress in that arena. Therapy from a master is worth shopping for! He’s still part of my team. I talk to him on the phone from time to time – like when I was first diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Read More
Photo by Monica Melton on Unsplash
Patient-caregiver activism spans my 40+ year career and my many hats. As the first male public health nurse in Western Massachusetts in 1976, I established a walking route in inner-city Holyoke with the Holyoke Visiting Nurses Association. I strove to immerse myself in the community of people I supported. This more profound understanding of their physical environment and social circumstances help me help them manage their chronic illness – diabetes, heart failure, spinal cord trauma, and strokes. As an Intensive Care Unit nurse manager in the 80’s I introduced open visiting hours for families. Up to this point visiting hours were from 1-2 p.m. and 6-9 p.m. Nursing staff felt that family would be in the way. So, on the one hand, my nursing staff would say with pride, we are patient advocates, and then limit family access to their loved ones. Made no sense to me. Working as Director of Quality Management in behavioral health managed care in the early 90’s, I was able to form clinician and patient advisory councils to inform us on the effects of our policies and practices on clinician and member lives. When my son, Mike, was recovering from brain and then lung surgery from metastatic melanoma, we realized as a family that recovery depended on us with little support from the hospitals or medical community. I still had never heard of patient-centered or patient engagement.
Now, I am retired – no longer an employee or a boss – and immersed in writing, speaking, and consulting as a patient-caregiver activist. I collaborate with clinicians, researchers, academics, policy makers, caregivers, entrepreneurs, designers, programmers, administrators. I have the opportunity now to reflect on the lessons I’ve learned about the craft of patient-caregiver activism as a catalyst for change. Let me share some of those lessons:
What lessons have you learned? Scroll down to bottom of the page to share.
My pathological optimism is under assault. How do I live with myself as a privileged white man? How do I continue my advocacy as a patient activist? This week I listened to Terry Gross speak with Maya Dusenbery on Fresh Air about her book, Doing Harm, The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick. I listened to Amy Chua speak about her book Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations on the Lawfare Podcast. I watched Samantha Bee on Full Frontal talking about women, history, and the treatment of pain. The wind has been sucked out of my sails. I may style myself a feminist, but the country, the healthcare system, medical research and the breaks are designed for me. I certainly have my challenges, but they are minimal compared to those outside my shrinking white man minority tribe.
I care about learning what works for people – groups and individuals – as they strive for best health. Yet most historical evidence – research – has been designed for white men, not women, not refugees, not people with limited means and power. It makes me crazy. What is wrong with us? Plus, our nation seems to increasingly petty, mean, shortsighted, and self-interested.
OK, white boy, get over it. I once got myself in trouble at diversity training. I said, My father was gay, my parents were holocaust survivors and refugees, my brother and sister are of mixed race, and I’m a man in a female dominant field – nursing. And now I’m disabled. My prejudices aren’t about gender, religion, race, disability. I’m prejudiced against thoughtless people. I was not appreciated.
Anyway, nothing has changed from before this week and now. The world is still crazy. I live in a racist, misogynistic, mean-spirited country. Thankfully, there are tribes of people trying to do the right thing. I can’t afford to lose my pathological optimism. I’m still working more and more on advocacy about making collaborative health choices (informed decision-making) with my health team based on science and my environment, circumstances, and values. Treating health choices as a grand experiment is still a sound approach. Try stuff, see if it works. If it doesn’t, adjust. I am so heartened by the March for Our Lives initiatives. Activated young people are our hope and our future.
It’s Passover, time to celebrate liberation. Liberation is not a destination, it’s the journey.
Thanks for listening to me rant. Good to be on this journey with you. We have work to do.
Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. Martin Luther King Jr.
I did nothing but international liberation politics for ten years, and usually it was like, you gain an inch, you lose a half an inch. It’s slow going, man. Steven Van Zandt
If you’ve got nothing to dance about, find a reason to sing. Melody Carstairs
On the road to liberation, learn to press Next. Even if there is no such an option. Talismanist Giebra
I am the bended, but not broken. I am the power of the thunderstorm. I am the beauty in the beast. I am the strength in weakness. I am the confidence in the midst of doubt. I am Her! Kierra C.T. Banks
My medication lists don’t match and none of them reflect what I actually take. I have received doctor visit print-outs and seen on-line summaries in five doctor offices and two infusion centers in the past year. Each place does some sort of reconciliation at each visit. In one, a medical technician asks me what I’m taking while looking at the screen, making changes. I say I don’t take that anymore. That one’s as needed, but I haven’t taken it since my last relapse. That was stopped years ago and taken off twice before, etc. The doctor reviews the resulting list. When I check the portal after the visit, some changes aren’t reflected. Other offices print out a list and ask me to write changes and return the list. The lists don’t reflect the changes I made last time. No surprise – the portals don’t reflect any of the changes. Another asks me while looking at the EHR, this compounded medication isn’t on our list, we’ll leave the non-compounded version (a doctor in their system prescribed the change and directed me to a pharmacy to have it filled). One doesn’t allow my twice-a-year infusion to be listed as such (only allows the number of times a day). I have a moderately simple medication regime taking 4-5 prescribed pills and salves, twice-a-year infusions, plus 3-4 over the counter medications with three as-needed (PRN) meds. I use two local pharmacies, a mail-order pharmacy, and a compounding pharmacy, depending on which has the lowest out-of-pocket cost. I’ve never had an inpatient hospitalization. Read More
Sometimes I feel like I’m part of someone else’s play. Just dropped in. I don’t know my lines, I don’t know the other characters. I think I’m in a drama, yet it feels like a farce. The stage is ever changing. Have you seen those round, rotating stages where the props keep changing? I think I’m playing myself, but I’m not quite sure. On top of it, I feel like crap, I’m exhausted, I’m cranky. I exit, stage right, left, whichever. What just happened? What do I do now? Oh yes, time to live life again.
When I worked at Boston Children’s Hospital, I took a class from the Big Apple Circus clowns. These are people who go from room to room visiting kids and their parents or go to scary procedures with them and help them feel better for a couple of minutes. The class was on reading the room. Sizing up the characters, the dynamic, the vibe in the room and then selecting a path forward. The kid is hurt, angry, and withdrawn. There’s tension between the hovering adults. What can you do? In seconds they insert themselves, do something odd or funny, draw out the child, and break the tension. Read More
