Patient Activation Network shares real patient stories for motivation, inspiration and to pass on life lessons. Do you have a story you want to share?
“There was a mistake in the schedule and you were assigned a patient who didn’t like to be cared for by black people,” discusses author and Family Nurse Practitioner, Nonye Aghanya MSc,RN, FNP-C about the first time she encountered racism when immigrating to America from Nigeria. “I didn’t understand the whole concept of racism coming from […]
“How do we support somebody that we care about? What do we say? How do we do it?” Dr. Ritu said in reference to how we act when a loved one is diagnosed with a medical condition. “People do one of two things. People do too much and almost overwhelm the individual or they do […]
“If I had cancer in my arm I would never be embarrassed to tell anyone about that, but instead I have active disease in my digestive tract and we’ve been taught that you don’t talk about that,” Jackie Zimmerman reflected on her ulcerative colitis diagnosis. “Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) is a real disease. It is […]
“The officer came to get me putting those cold, steel handcuffs on my wrists extremely tightly as he put me in the back of the Paddy Wagon where I can see the smears of blood on the wall and smell the foul odor from within,” reflected a stoic Dr. Patton. Just like that Dr. Patton […]
“Doctors are not how to be of service for people of whom a cure is not an option,” reflected Dr. Ungerleider on her path to palliative care. “We are taught that death is the ultimate failure. People aren’t dying in the ways that match the goals and values of how they want to live their […]
Those of us living with MS tend to see our neurologist once or twice a year, especially when the disease is stable. The problem is that changes can occur between visits that we don’t recognize or forget to write down to address at the next appointment. There may be areas of disease progression that we […]
“CS Lewis said, isn’t it funny how day to day nothing changes, but when you look back everything is different,” laughed Gordon Jones, PhD, in referring to change, “except for the healthcare. We would still be on pen and paper if it wasn’t for the legislative change.” This is the climate that Dr. Jones and […]
“According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS), in 2015 the United States spent 3.1 trillion dollars on healthcare. 10% of which, or 3.1 billion dollars, in that one year was spent on prescription drugs,” explained author Dr. Barrie Levitt. “If we want to make the cost of healthcare less expensive in the United […]
“In the field of immunology, the big, bad wolf is autoimmune disease,” said Dr. Chase Spurlock, Founder and CEO of IQuity. IQuity is working to provide physicians tools to make early diagnosis possible in difficult neurological conditions like MS. The ability to diagnosis autoimmune disease early can have a positive impact on both patient outcomes […]
At 3 AM on a July 2012 morning, I lay helpless on an emergency room cot, unable to experience any emotion other than fear and the physical sensations that racked my body. My extreme levels of anxiety did not cease; my body showed me no mercy, perhaps because my racing mind did not extend that courtesy to […]