“We need to raise our voices a little more, even as they say to us, ‘This is so uncharacteristic of you.’ Invisibility is not a natural state for anyone.” MitsuyYamada After each of our SpeakSooner community education programs I would ask myself, “How did this program differ from the one before? And, what was the […]

I don’t know who it was that said poetry is defined as a language writing itself out of a difficult situation. What I know is illness is one of those situations. 

When I was first diagnosed,” she said, “I didn’t feel I needed your help. I know how to get what I need—I’m a nurse, we speak the same language.”

  “Variability is the law of life…no two bodies are alike, no two individuals react and behave alike under the conditions which we know as disease.” – William Osler, MD In my previous blog I noted, “patients’ want to be good patients,” which prompted several people to ask, “What is a good patient?” 

  I often think about what the writer and patient Anatole Broyard said, “Stories are the antibodies against illness.” It’s hard enough that a diagnosis comes along to threaten our lives—does it also have to threaten our life stories?