Patients for a Moment: The Fifth Edition

Welcome to the Fifth Edition of Patients for a Moment, the Blog Carnival for, by, and about the most overlooked participant in medicine – the patient. If you enjoy the Doctor’s blog carnival, Grand Rounds, or Change of Shift (Which highlights the Nursing field) read on and see things from our point of view for just a little while.

Laurie Edwards has taken a day or so away from A Chronic Dose to take a “working vacation” – a phrase that usually means “Same life, different zip code” – but now she’s back and has been contemplating Illness vs Disability. What defines these two states? Can you be one, but not the other?

Liz Schau of Dear Thyroid is less-than-impressed with her “roommate”, the unwelcome guest in her life in her essay Oh, dear thyroid, can’t we please gland along? Like the unwanted house guest, it just won’t go away… and like fish and relatives, it begins to stink after three days!

Rachel B. of Rachel’s Diabetes Tales has recently come to understand that Owning My Expertise also means using it – for the good of others. Chronic Illness bloggers are strong advocates for living our lives with (or in spite of) our individual circumstances. If we can help someone else understand our lives, the road gets a little easier for those who come after us.

Someone asked Kairol Rosenthal of Everything Changes What’s so funny about Cancer? Ummm… Kairol, I’m glad this is your question! Suddenly I’m out of my depth. Somehow, I just don’t think this subject is a laugh a minute…

In the midst of her battle with chronic pain, Barbara Kivowitz of In Sickness and In Health finds solace in a familiar Anthem. Music can instantly transport you to another time and place: Whenever I hear a certain 1980’s tune I am back in college; a few years before the heart operation that almost killed me. No pacemaker, no stroke, no chest infection, one pill a day. I want to tell my younger self, Slow down, man; enjoy it. These are the days that dreams are made of.

Duncan Cross asks “How’d she die?” in reaction to some of the “misinformation” *cough*bullcrap*cough* being spread about the Federal Health Care Proposal. Instead of avoiding the subject of death – or lying about it – we need to talk it out and make some important decisions. This ain’t no dress rehearsal, friends.

Leslie Rott of Getting Closer to Myself has been pegged with the 710 tag and it won’t go away. Everyone Wants To Be A 10, But No One Wants To Be A 710 is the story of how she is slowing turning herself back into a 10. Go forth and read; she’ll be happy to explain.

A reader thinks that Aviva of Sick Momma doth complaineth too much, so she asks To Whine Or Not to Whine? That Is The Question. It’s my experience that the big things never bother you – the little, everyday crap that you have to do over and over and over again is what drives you nuts!

Selena Kerrbs Inouye of  Oh My Aches And Pains! sends her account of delayed-reaction Survivor’s Guilt in My Routine: Working on Letting Go of Some Old Routines. Beating Survivor’s Guilt is a hard road, but Selena is taking it one step at a time.

Lisa, author of All That and a Box of Rocks, sends us Back to School (with Patients). Like moms everywhere, Lisa is beginning to think about sending her young son to school this fall. But this isn’t your ordinary school age child… and Lisa isn’t an ordinary mother.

Evan Falchuk of the See First Blog offers his take on denial (not the one near the Sphinx and the pyramids) in Denying Illness. Have a problem, fix the problem… seems logical enough, but fear can make you avoid the issue.

Barbara Olson of Florence dot com has already read Leslie Rott’s Patients for a Moment submission and comments on her own frustrating encounter with the health care system in It’s all in the Numbers. Barbara never sat on the examining table and never disrobed, yet was diagnosed with TWO medical conditions. Once again, we’re reduced to a series of billing numbers. My name is Steve, remember that. I am not 746.1 (Tricuspid Atresia, Congenital)

Your humble host, Steve of Adventures of a Funky Heart!, reaches back in time to highlight an unsung hero in Thirteen lights. He was just an ordinary man in an ordinary job; he probably had no idea how many lives he changed.

And with that, Patients for a Moment: The Fifth Edition comes to a close. Thank you so much for dropping by! Kim, the Head Nurse of Emergiblog will be your host next time; the deadline for submissions to her blog is August 23rd!

Tags: A Chronic Dose, All That and a Box of Rocks, Blog Carnival, Change of Shift, Dear Thyroid, Duncan Cross, Emergiblog, Everything Changes, Florence dot com, Getting Closer to Myself, Grand Rounds, In Sickness and in Health, Oh My Aches and Pains!, Patients for a Moment, PFAM, Rachel's Diabetes Tales, See First, Sick Momma