I’ve traded away my privacy around my own deeply personal medical issues for the chance – the mere hope really – that maybe someone will listen, will learn.
I was being worked up in the ED one night for a small bowel obstruction, the imaging was _very_ concerning.
The surgical team came through, reviewed the EMR, peppered me with questions, felt my abdomen, and then left.
Except the surgical resident came back in a minute later.
She saw how scared I was, felt my unasked questions as her team treated me like a talking, anatomically interesting, mannequin that they were subjecting to a rapid-fire pit-stop...
And so she came back in to make sure I was ok. I wasn’t.
I was even more scared and confused than I had been.
She answered my questions methodically, matching the level of detail I needed. She was kind. She was patient. She was present.
It turned out her own training had been interrupted by a cancer diagnosis.
We can’t rely on the “my clinician has been through at least as much shit as I have” model of #meded.
Empathy is a skill. We can teach clinicians to imagine others complexly, we can teach them to be present, to listen, to believe patients.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
hey, #medtwitter, if anyone knows who this guy is, slide into my DMs. (I'll provide a Signal # if you want encryption & disappearing messages) I'll file the complaint with the board of medicine myself, your fingerprints won't be anywhere on it.
Yesterday, @cosetthetable publicly named a UNH athletics employee who sexually harassed her & submitted Title IX complaints to both USA Fencing & UNH. In deciding to speak out, she had to weigh the risks, including the risk of legal action against her (ie. defamation) 1/
When Trump calls for "strengthening" libel laws, it's because he wants to silence those survivors who wish to come forward. He wants to turn defamation into an even sharper weapon to cut down those who dare defy the violence of patriarchy. 2/
I've seen, in just the last hour, two authors discussing being forced to make redactions to their stories by publishers. The truth is libel law already silences survivors. That's why the @TIMESUPLDF is so vitally important – but we haven't gone far enough
But here's the thing: without healthcare I'm dead pretty quickly. This raging asshole, Kavanaugh, will overturn the ACA. I'll die - along with many, many other chronically ill disabled folx.
So call your senators anyway.
Be cynical.. BUT ask your Arizona people to call Jeff Flake, and tell him to vote no. Your Alaska people to call Murkowski, your Maine people to call Collins. (202) 224-3121.
Acquiescing guarantees them a victory. And so I am begging you to please keep fighting to #StopKavanaugh.
There are so, so, so many of us who will die if he overturns the ACA – and he .will. overturn the ACA.
Our federal courts have largely held. They've been slowly eroded as a POTUS who is, in all likelihood, a Russian plant, has nominated judges picked by fringe extremists & approved by a Senate that represents a radical minority of the population. But they've mostly held– until now
I've used some of the precious little good time I get to pursue an advocacy strategy of mobilizing comments on administrative regulations. I know that sounds geeky af – that's because it is. POTUS acts mostly through agencies & departments. That bureaucracy has to issue rules
By law those rules must be open to public comment & those comments form part of the record when rules are challenged in court
Bottom line: my strategy has been to do what little I can to help the lawyers challenging bad Trump rules win in court.
So, basically, I have an inflammatory bowel disease /and/ a motility disorder – and it feels like its up to me to figure out what to do about a GI transit time of 4 hours.
For those who don't keep track of GI transit times (what–like your hobbies are so cool) 4 hours is