Be your own best patient advocate

Patients and their loved ones need to be their own best advocates for medical care. Here, I share our recent experience during my husband’s heart attack. Spoiler alert: A formal complaint against a doctor has been filed.

Laughter really is the best medicine

Saturday was a good day. My boyfriend and I were sitting on the couch watching TV together, our first time alone since the night before his big cancer surgery a week and a half earlier. That’s when I heard it, when I saw it. I forget what commercial came on – that’s not important. What […]

An open letter to 2013: Good riddance

Dear 2013, Sorry my farewell letter is a little late, I’ve been a bit busy dealing with the messes you left behind. I can’t say I was sorry to see you go … while I knew exactly how long you’d be here, I still think you overstayed your welcome. I know I wasn’t the only […]

Was it there all along, right in front of us?

I had an epiphany two weeks ago. I can’t tell you what it was, not yet anyway. But my nearly three years of worrying, wondering, stressing and panicking came to a screeching halt. I had seen my life going one of three ways – one path would require me to accomplish what I had been trying […]

The many benefits of mental health days

I’ve been struggling a bit lately with stress, and frustrations and meltdowns and finally decided that if I didn’t take a couple of days off – mental health days – that I may kill someone. Or cry, again. In the span of about five days: My hot water heater died and flooded my basement, the […]

An everyday hero: His 911 call lead to the recovery of missing teen

Every day I work with heroes – doctors, nurses and others who save lives. And I get to help tell their stories through the media – stories of bringing a patient back to life after he arrested more than 15 times in an hour, stories of people who gave a kidney to a stranger either […]

Abandoning the pursuit of polish

I’ve been thinking about polish a lot lately. Not shoe polish, nail polish or furniture polish, but personal and professional polish. It means different things to different people – for me, polish isn’t about experience, education, proficiency or professionalism. To me, polish is more about personality, relationship and communication style, appearance and delivery. One isn’t […]

There’s comfort in consistency (even on, or maybe especially on, vacation)

Until a few years ago, I never visited the same place twice on vacation. The only place I’ve ever said I’d go back to is Paris, I’d do that in a heartbeat. I still haven’t returned, but at least I finally convinced my boyfriend to get a passport, so we’re one step closer. The way […]

Next step to lowering stress? Giving up the grudges

I’ve been on a mission to lower my stress, and I’ve been doing pretty well. Giving up guilt and my new approach to exercise (i.e. actually exercising) has helped a lot. So has this blog – simply writing and putting it out there for people to read, relate and respond to is incredibly cathartic; it’s […]

Life can be messy, especially with socks on the floor and sauce on the ceiling

I want a candy bar. Or a brownie. A cream cheese brownie. I’m a little tense and cranky today and snacks fix crankiness, everyone knows that. It could be the weather – we just wrapped up the third rainiest June on record and July is off to a gray start. Or it could be because […]