That’s a line from an essay entitled “cri de cure” by Ethan Perlstein. I tweeted it and got some great replies: Hahaha. I’m often asked by medical teams if I am a MD or nurse. I tell them ‘no,but I have a PhD when it comes to my daughter’ – @SolidFooting Yes! I know more […]
Rare Disease
Rare Disease Day 2013
People living with rare conditions inspire my work every day. A few resources to check out: Follow @RareDiseaseDay on Twitter or subscribe to my Rare Disease list Read Wendy White’s post on e-patients.net: Rare Disease Day 2013: Help Spread Awareness Read the Pew Research Center’s report featuring insights from people living with rare conditions: Peer-to-peer […]
The boy with a thorn in his joints (and the mom who turned over every rock)
When I was writing the Pew Research report, “Peer-to-peer Healthcare,” I switched back and forth between numbers and stories, national survey data and notes from my fieldwork among people living with rare conditions. I learned to scan my spreadsheet of rare-disease respondents for women’s names since they seemed to stop at nothing to protect their […]
Look for the helpers
You may have seen the image before, associated with this quote: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother’s […]
“So many quiet heroes and heroines who live among us…”
– Zoe Brain, in a comment on the New York Times magazine story, The Hazards of Growing Up Painlessly, which garnered an extraordinary display of public ignorance and fellowship around rare conditions. My hope is that the reporter and editors read every comment and learned from the community peer review of the article.
“Sometimes there isn’t an obvious silver lining to cling to, so you have to try and create your own.”
– Kristen Cerabona, mother of a girl living with CLOVES Syndrome, writing about what it’s like to be a “marathon parent.”
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