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To everyone who sees  my WordPress blog, I have not begun to use it yet.  My blog is at http://yourgoldwatch.blogspot.ca/ but for comments to some people I am being forced to use a WordPress identity

Annette

We’re All Heroes

I read some of this: A Guide To Transforming Patient Experience. It’s more for professionals and managers in health care, but has a lot of good information. Though it is about health care in the UK I think the patient experience has basic similarities no matter where you are

http://www.institute.nhs.uk/patient_experience/guide/home_page.html

This is a quote from Page 1:

“Patients tell us that they care about their experience of care as much as clinical effectiveness and safety. They want to feel informed, supported and listened to so that they can make meaningful decisions and choices about their care. They want to be treated as a person not a number”

I’m sure that we all want to hit that spot in the middle where the circles overlap. Effectiveness, safety and a good experience. If you can’t have all of those aspects it’s a personal choice about what we are going to prioritize.

To me short term clinical effectiveness is not the most important. We’re in this for the long haul and we need to be able to trust and work with the doctor who is trying to help us. Certainly if we have a doctor like the Dr. Greenbaum portrayed in his Kiss My ___ article it will be a harder road.

And I know that for some of us the road is as hard as the one in the picture.

It comes down to RA Warrior’s prison rules – a lot of hard choices. I thought this was a very apt post from Kelly Young.

Rheumatoid Disease Plays by Prison Rules

It is a darn good thing that Kelly made her own warrior woman. When I looked for an image I found that I could not associate the warriors in most of them with Kelly.

It is definitely a fight to get along with RA and we don’t have a reasonable chance to ignore it. Sometimes I feel like a poster woman for Big Pharma because in my case most of the treatments I have tried have worked in slowing down the progression of the RA and improving my quality of life. I spent most of my working life with RA. When I started finding out about RA I found a statement that said a large % of patients were not working after 10 years and I managed 30 years.

I’d say we are all heros, and it makes me feel a little better myself to say that. I’ll have to work on that hero idea. I hope you can too.

The Days Seem To Have More Hours When You`re Retired

I remember how long the summer days were when I was 12 and on summer vacation. I used to hang out with friends on the shady patio. We’d sit on the back steps and my mom would warn us that sitting on the cold cement would give us piles. But I digress.
The days have been flashing by for years. Suddenly there is time enough and variety enough to make the day seem longer – like I have the gift of more hours. And it’s true. I do have them back now.
Yay