Should People With Health Problems Talk About their Conditions?

Do you need to explain to the person on the checkout line or, say, a mother organizing a bake sale, why your back hurts? Or why you need a seat on the bus?

Posted in Communication, Essential Lessons, from the author, journalism, Life, Life as a Patient, PrivacyTagged , , , , , , , , 8 Comments on Should People With Health Problems Talk About their Conditions?

Contemplating Empathy, Early This Morning After the Earthquake

Last night I began reading a long essay, Regarding the Pain of Others, by Susan Sontag. The work dates to 1993, and centers on the power of photographs of war. She considers Virginia Woolf’s earlier reflections on horrific images from the Spanish Civil War, in Three Guineas. Sontag writes: “Not to be pained by these […]

Posted in Books, Communication, Life, Medical Ethics, Patient-Doctor RelationshipTagged , , , , , , , , 4 Comments on Contemplating Empathy, Early This Morning After the Earthquake

I Feel Your Pain (not)

A tweet hit me on Sunday evening, from a stranger: @Mibberz I’m saddened by how many ADULTS can’t get their #rheum 2 understand the level of severity of their pain.What hope is there for my daughter? I half-watched an on-line exchange about the issue, and then went about my family’s dinner preparations. The message came […]

Posted in Life, Life as a Doctor, Life as a Patient, Patient-Doctor RelationshipTagged , , , , , , , 1 Comment on I Feel Your Pain (not)
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