Do I value the privacy of my health information? What do you mean?
That if I email my doctor about an embarrassing symptom, only my doctor will read it?
That only my doctor, my nurse and I have access to the information in my electronic medical record, including notes on our confidential conversations, prescriptions and test results?
That my local drug store doesn’t sell information about me to pharmaceutical companies?
That …
Uncle Walt died this morning. Finally.
I say “finally” because I believed this day would come four months ago, when he had emergency bypass surgery.
At the time, I didn’t believe Walt would live; he was an ailing, seventy-seven-year-old man with severe pulmonary disease. When his heart started to hurt one Friday, his doctors told him, “With bypass surgery, you might live. Without it, you’ll be dead before the weekend is over.”
Walt’s …
In fall of 1994, I was sixteen years old and sick. I had lost a lot of weight, reduced my diet to BRAT and roast chicken, filled a half-dozen stool samples, even tried a few prescriptions — and nothing seemed to help.
By that point I was seeing a gastroenterologist, Dr. C. After a pointless barium enema and follow-through, Dr. C performed a colonoscopy. From that, he gave me a definitive …
In 2005, my husband and I bought a small farmhouse in northern New England next door to Tom and Sally.
They were in their early seventies, married nearly fifty years, with a large family. Tom’s grandfather had built a farmhouse in 1900 on the family’s small pig farm. In the 1970s, Tom and Sally had parceled off the land and built a modern house for themselves, a stone’s throw from the …
Over the years, many people have shared with me their disappointment at the lack of acknowledgment from their physician when their loved one died. Especially, when their loved one had been a long time patient of the physician. In fact, many people have shared that they switched physicians because of what they perceived as a slight.
When people go to a physician for many years, especially the family physician, it is …
In most states, doctors are mandated to ask their patients if they feel physically “safe at home.” With an aging population, perhaps another question should be added: are you financially safe?
Two examples suggest the problem.
“Trudy” had always managed her financial matters, even complex transactions. Aging, however, had made her short-term memory a bit more problematic and her focus diminished by TIAs. Even though her daughter shared responsibility on some of …
A frequent response to those contemplating suicide is to remember friends and loved ones, how much one is needed and how much one would be missed. Some people have a sense this statement is true and that the depressive emotions are inaccurate, so seeking therapy, medication, or riding out the episode will result in returning to whatever emotional mode is typical. Others don’t believe this sentiment, and they potentially live …
As we reflect on the year that’s passing, it’s not unusual to formulate wishes and resolutions for the new year. I’m not much for resolutions anymore, but I do have hopes and wishes for me and for my readers.
Of course, my first wish is that those of you who suffer from chronic illness — including chronic pain — have your health restored. I know that, for some, this is a …
Overheard in the gym:
“Yeah, but I heard that ____ can be dangerous.”
“Oh, they wouldn’t let us buy it if it was.”
Lately, the public’s faith in the safety of prescription and over-the-counter drugs has been making me uneasy. Advances in drug development mean that many of us truly can live better lives through their wise use. But are we adequately guided and protected by a) regulators, b) our clinicians, c) a …
It is no secret that one of the best ways towards better health management is a good physician-patient relationship. There needs to be buy in from both participants to shared decision-making. One might object to the title of this post, stating that it puts the biggest burden on the patient, however when examining how this is achieved, you will, I hope, feel differently.
1. Establish a relationship. This might sound trite, but the first few …
Here are a few words some physicians and medical professionals have used to describe patients who have turned to Dr. Google for information and advice on their medical conditions: irritating, suspicious, distrustful and challenging.
Perhaps frustrated with physicians’ continued resistance to Internet-empowered patients, Dr. Kevin Pho urged them to “deal with” the fact that patients “Google their symptoms.”
But, we all know the Internet-informed patient is old news. I’m here with …
Many years ago, Alfred Korzybski wrote that “the map is not the territory.” Gregory Bateson went on to argue that the map, which represents reality, is not the reality. This distinction has implications for the role of patient voice in health care planning and policy.
Today, many organizations are making serious attempts to include the patient voice in policy and decision-making. Unfortunately, more than a …
What can we learn from an experiment conducted on a single person? That is, when the subject population (N) is a single person, aka N=1? How and how much do such findings contribute to knowledge about the experimental intervention? How relevant are results to other patients or populations or diseases? In assessing what is known about a phenomenon, how are these findings treated in comparison to studies with 30 or …
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Silence — it’s deafening. I look around at this empty apartment and take in the sinking feeling that I’m alone.
New Yorkers seem to crave “alone time.” I see individuals sitting on park benches all over the city, stealing moments, staring into space, encased in an invisible aura of solitude. It’s quite a feat actually to do this amidst the noise and tidal wave of humanity that ebbs and flows through …
You may have noticed an uptick in messages from your health plan or clinician notifying you that “You are the captain of your health care team.” I have seen them here and here and here and here, for example.
My response to this message? Bad metaphor: I am not the captain of my health care team.
I may — on some days — consider myself a member of that team, should I actually …
I’ve learned that people will forget what you said,
People will forget what you did,
But people will never forget how you made them feel.
-Maya Angelou
We are often asked, “How can you do that?” How can you stand to do that work? Such a dreary subject. Grim but supposedly necessary. Don’t you get depressed with all the talk of dying? Facing death and its consequences every day must be the prime route …
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When he was five, my son Daniel went through a rough patch with his asthma. Both he and his sister Allison had been diagnosed the year before, when we were living in Colorado. I never knew if it was the fault of the pollution that too often smeared our view of the mountains, or my then-husband’s two-pack-daily cigarette habit. Or was it the unspoken shriek of anxiety?
After I divorced my …
When I first started facilitating a grief support group shortly after moving to New York, my aim was simply to create a supportive environment for members to heal from their grief and to form long lasting bonds of friendship. In the course of five months however, I’ve begun to wonder whether emotional and psychological healing can be contained into an end goal with a finish line.
For the most part, authors …
I’ve been chronically ill since I contracted a viral infection in 2001. Were I to recover, I’d take these six hard-earned lessons with me into the land of the healthy.
1. Less is more. I used to be an accumulator. My life was filled with stuff: books and magazines that sat unread; CDs; jewelry; knickknacks and trinkets; clothing and all its accompaniments (shoes, belts, scarves). Since becoming sick, I’ve learned that less …
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Current efforts of clinicians, hospitals and researchers to make health care more “patient-centered” include inviting some of us to advise on research priorities, care organization and delivery under the assumption that, as patients, we understand what patient-centered outcomes and care are. These invitations and our acceptance of them often result in confusion and disappointment for everyone, regardless of good intentions. What do patients know about the inner workings of …
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