Three Asks: One Blog

Well, June is almost upon us and with June comes our third gathering of The Walking Gallery!!!

I have three major asks within this blog and I know many of you are pressed for time so:

1.     Please register to attend the June 2, 7-9 pm gathering of The Walking Gallery 3, at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, 4900 Connecticut Ave, NW Washington, DC

2.   

Dear Friends,

Gregory Downing and Lygeia Riccardi brought to my attention that scholorships were now available for this event so we are no longer having a flash mob walk at Health Data Palooza.  Instead apply for a scholarship and attend and walk if you are inspired to walk and chat if you are inspired to chat.

Here is the link: http://healthdatapalooza.org/get-involved/how-consumers-and-patients-can-participate-in-the-health-datapalooza/

3.     Donate to theMedstartr fund to create a Mini-Documentary on the Walking Gallery

The Walking Gallery 3

For the past two years The Walking Gallery gathered in the Kaiser Permanente Center for Total Health.  It was a great venue for the first two years.  Thank you Kaiser Permanente for your gracious support!  The first year we had 54 Walkers wearing their jackets.  The second year we had over 80.  

In our third gathering I hope to see over 100 Walkers and many additional guests.  I attended quite a few conferences this past year where thought leaders in medicine wondered how to activate regular people within their communities.  I also attended a lot of conferences hosted within nice governmental buildings or grand hotels; those individuals running these meetings asked how we could involve people of faith and places of worship in the larger dialog of patient rights and engagement.

So… The Walking Gallery 3 will be held in St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Northwest DC one block from the Mural 73 Cents.  My younger son was baptized in this Church and we held my husband’s memorial service here.  The school beside the Church is Murch Elementary.  Both my son’s attended this school and I have volunteered there to help with many art projects in the last nine years.  I am so glad to welcome the world of medical advocacy into our local community.

We will gather at June 2^nd, 7:00pm have light refreshments.  We will share our stories.  At 8:30 we will walk across the street and re-dedicate the mural 73 Cents.  It will be a Blast!!! This will also give us a moment to recharge and reflect on why we care so very much about patients and positive change in healthcare.

In case any of you wondered why we have our biggest gathering in the beginning of June each year, it is because we host it right before the first day of Health Data Palooza since so many like minded folks would like to attend both events.

The Walking Gallery: Mini- Documentary

Finally, I began a new Medstartr campaign to fund a mini-documentary of the Walking Gallery Movement.  These funds will pay the amazing film-makers for Eidolon Films: Tessa Moran and Ben Crosbie as they create a piece that will include interviews with walkers, conversations with artists and explain the technical process of creating a gallery jacket.

Thank you everyone who can support these amazing causes!  Onward and Upward!

Non-compliant

The woman looked at me and partially asked in jest, “What exactly does Ted do?” 

I am familiar with this question as I am a friend of Ted Eytan and he is not easy to quantify.  Shall I answer in the traditional way?  He is a doctor.  He works as a Director of the Permanente Federation with a focus on emerging technologies, utilization of social media channels and health information technology that supports patients and their family members in achieving an active role in their health journey.  But grasping the true concept of Ted is sort of like holding liquid mercury between one’s fingertips; for like mercury, Ted is fast and reflective.

In May of 2009, I attended a small Health 2.0 meeting in Washington, DC.  My husband was in inpatient hospice and gave me leave to spend a few hours with some amazing people who were trying to change the world of healthcare.  That day I would meet with Christine Kraft, Susannah Fox, Cindy Throop, Claudio Luis Vera, Nancy Shute, Dave deBronkart (via speaker-phone) and I would meet Ted.  Ted seemed so serene within the group. This was my first health meeting and I brought my husband’s dell laptop computer so I would seem professional.  Then I listened to presentations on ehealth.  At 3:15 I spoke and the room went silent as I recounted the horror my husband and I had faced these many weeks. Ted did what Ted does best, he listened to all I had to say then he asked a question: “What was the worst thing that happened?”

I answered, “Lack of access to my husband’s data was the worst thing.” The group then told me to focus on that.  For the past three years I have and I often have fought for patient data access with Ted at my side.  Recently I had the honor of painting Ted’s second jacket in The Walking Gallery.  This jacket would tell his story and it is entitled “Non-Compliant.”

Ted has been a member of The Walking Gallery for the past year. He has walked all over the US wearing Surgeon General Regina Benjamin’s story on his first jacket. He did an amazing job. So many people know more about our Surgeon General because this man was willing to wear the trials of another on his back.

But this jacket is Ted’s story.  Ted is one of those amazing people who question everything: the status quo, the old model and new trends. Through these questions he purifies thought and distills a million pleas for help into a coherent strategy.

Ted looks to the left when others look to the right. This skill is not without price, and Ted has paid again and again. You want know how you learn to see a problem from the outside?  You learn by being the outsider. You learn by years of darkness. You learn bravery while hiding in closets avoiding fists or taunts. You spend years standing out within a crowd, not fitting in. You learn in the lonely time of introspection that these other children see a different world.

Their faces are not finished yet.

When I was young, I loved to paint and draw old men. My friends wondered at my fascination. I said “I love to draw their beautiful pain.”  Ted has one of the most beautiful faces I have ever seen, and he had it as a child. In this painting, I stand behind Ted. My hand rests upon his shoulder. I too look to the side with a worried glance and question what is coming.  I know how it feels to see a problem from the outside.  I know the darkness that Ted has seen.  Yet we smile. Ted firmly replies to any set back, “Love always wins.”  The child in me holds the child in him. Together we are more powerful than we were alone.

We are the non-compliant ones. Do you know what compliant means? It means docile, willing, obedient, manageable and submissive to an excessive degree. Ted may be a doctor. I may be a patient. In this we are one, out and proud.  We are non-compliant. We question authority.  We question folks who say “That is just the way it is.”  We will not stop asking questions.

In April of 2011, I told Ted we should have a gallery show in the Kaiser Permanente Center for Total Health.  He responded with a twinkle in his eye that they would never let us pound a nail in these new walls.  I responded with a glimmer in my eye, “We won’t need nails we will wear the art upon our backs.”

Now 164 jackets later, I can firmly say a patient art advocacy movement was born out of a moment of shared non-compliance.

Love always wins.     

A 2011 Christmas Letter

I have a few friends and family who send newsletters every Christmas. I look forward to these missives with great joy. In the days before Facebook, it was the only way to stay abreast of the life events of distant friends. In these days of instant messaging and social media, I find them still a wonderful source of information and something more. A Christmas letter is a retelling of one year in the life of a family and it is amazing to see 365 days of important events unfold within a few sparse paragraphs. I love to see the march of time as told by a family matriarch or patriarch. I love to read the words of my late husband’s best friend from college, even if his news is sad to hear.

So, this year I decided to write a Christmas letter. Whether you read this on a page of paper or via backlit screen, know that I am happy to share our life with you this joyous season.

“How are the boys?” I hear this question wherever I go. I am glad to say, they are doing well.

Freddie Holliday III is 13 years old and he grew over the summer and is now almost as tall as his father. His voice changed and he quite likes his new adult voice. He is now in 7^th Grade at Ivymount School in Silver Spring, Maryland. He got an award last spring in his science class for best presentation on his science fair experiment. He collected data about logo recognition rates among preschool children who watch television. It was a cool project.

Isaac Holliday is a five-year-old in kindergarten at Murch Elementary in Washington DC. He is a joyous child and recently had a great deal of fun playing the donkey in the Christmas pageant. He has been struggling with learning to read. We have been very blessed to have my boyfriend-Ben Merrion tutor Isaac as Ben works in the adult literacy department at MLK, Jr. Library and is a wonderful teacher.

Speaking of Ben, we have been dating for over a year and this summer Ben made his first trip to Oklahoma to visit my family. He was such an amazing help in guiding the children through the airport during the trip. I also got to meet Ben’s Mother and sister this fall and we had a grand time.

We also have been blessed to meet the amazing Kait B. Roe. She is patient advocate too. She has recently moved to DC and has agreed to help with night-sitting when I am out of town speaking. We are overjoyed to have her as part of our life.

I am so glad Kait is here to help because I travel a lot to speak and paint about the patient view. I owe a great deal of thanks to everyone who helped out in 2011 while I was gone. So thank you to Ben, Kait, Joan Holliday, Courtney Mazza, Megan Michell, Eleanor Franc, Emily Stewart, Liam Kemp, Pete Wright, Cindy Throop, Shoshannah Kantor, Nora Reno, Miriam Cutelis and Robin McGrew.

This was the year I traveled nationally to speak about our family medical story and the tragedy of Fred’s medical care. I delivered over 20 speeches this year visiting Florida, Oklahoma, Illinois, Missouri, Maryland, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, California, Oregon, Texas and Puerto Rico. Most of the venues that ask me to speak also allowed me to paint onsite. It was amazing to set up in the back of grand ballrooms and paint the words spoken at these august events filtering the images through the patient view. Most venues asked me to deliver a second speech at the conclusion of the conferences explaining the paintings created over the days of the conference.

In June of this year Charles Denham, MD offered me a one year fellowship with TMIT (Texas Medical Institute of Technology). As part of the process of being a fellow, he asked me what TMIT could do to advance patient advocacy. I mentioned that conference attendees wrote to me after my speeches telling me how much the patient story was affecting their lives and profession. They were asking for other speakers like me. While within patient communities people who wished to speak often had no way of becoming connected to facilities that needed patient speakers. So when Chuck asked me his question, I responded that we needed a patient speaker’s bureau. For the last six months Chuck and the great team at TMIT have been doing exactly that.

We now have a site called SpeakerLink.org and over sixty speakers have completed profiles and many providers have logged on to find likely speakers. Thank God that Chuck Denham and the TMIT team met me a little over a year ago. SpeakerLink.org is such a blessing!

Another amazing creation in 2011 was The Walking Gallery. In April, I attended the opening of a new Kaiser Permanente facility in DC called the KP Center for Total Health. It was a lovely place: a medical facility lit like a gallery. I immediately wanted to have a gallery show in the space. But we would not pound a single nail. All the art would be worn on the backs of business suit jackets and lab coats. Ted Eytan, MD with KP thought it was a great idea and the KP team thought the proposal over and by the end of the month we had approval. At the end of April, I and five other artists began to paint. On the night of June 7^th 54 people walked with fine art paintings depicting patient stories on their backs. It was an amazing and sacred experience.

At this point there are 107 jackets in the Walking Gallery and the movement grows larger each day you can view the entire gallery at Welcome to The Walking Gallery - Regina Holliday's Medical ... Those that walk in their jackets have attended events and medical conferences throughout the United States and in a great deal of Europe. We now have walkers on five continents spreading the power of the patient story.

So that was this year. We are well, happy and so very blessed. And I hope 2012 is another wonderful year filled with advocacy and loving friends. God bless you as you each walk on your own path and I hope to see you along the way.

Love,
Regina, Freddie and Isaac.

2011

SOCIAL media JUSTICE

My husband Fred had a favorite story about John Ford, and Steven Spielberg told the tale. The story was an account of the day that Steven Spielberg met John Ford.

The story went something like this. Steven was really young and had been making a few super 8 movies and he had the opportunity to meet John Ford in his studio office. After waiting for about an hour, Mr. Ford came in and Steven Spielberg began to speak with him for a few moments. Mr. Ford said, “So, you want to be a picture maker.” John Ford then gestured at a series of pictures on the wall. He asked Steven to describe what he saw. Steven started to describe the Native Americans and objects within the picture. That was not what John Ford was looking for. “No, no, “ he said. “Where is the horizon?” Steven said that it was at the top of the frame. Mr. Ford asked Steven to describe the next picture. Again Steven began describing the Calvary and elements, and again Mr. Ford was frustrated. “No, no. Where is the horizon?” Steven looked and said, “It is at the very bottom of the painting.”

John Ford said “When you are able to distinguish the art of the horizon at the bottom of a frame or at the top, but not going right through the center of the frame, when you are able to appreciate why it is at the top and why it is at the bottom, you might be a pretty good picture maker. Now, get out of here.”

That is a great story and Fred would tell it to his college film students and I would tell it to my pre-k art students for years to come. I loved that story because it makes it very clear that the angle from which you view things has an effect on how you view things.

This idea was reinforced yesterday at Isaac’s follow-up doctor appointment at the new Kaiser Permanente building by Union Station. He was meeting with a Nutritionist and was sitting in the waiting room section for internal medicine. Within the space, a kiosk had been placed to go online free of charge. Isaac walked over. He was very excited to find an accessible computer, but was quite disappointed when he tried to use it. The angle of the screen was set and fixed at an upward facing position. Isaac tried to adjust it as he would at home on our Mac, but the screen would not budge. He walked away his shoulders slumped.

Isaac had just been placed at the bottom of the frame.

I thought of all these things in relation to the jacket I was creating for Andre Blackman. Andre can be found on twitter as @mindofandre . He writes and speaks about the power of new media, social media, health 2.0, public health, mobile health and disparities. He sees a new future where the old tools of public health 1.0 are discarded and the power of Health 2.0 embraced.

So, I painted a new vision for Andre, a lady Justice for our time. This is “SOCIAL media JUSTICE.”

In this painting, an African American woman stands proudly. In her right hand she holds the scales of justice and in her left a suckling babe. A halo of binary code encircles her head and she is wrapped round within a golden cloth. Twisting around and behind her is a segment of film depicting icons from health, our life and social media.

Look at how she hefts the scales. This is not a dainty Roman deity with her hand lightly holding a tool of measurement. No, this lady hefts the scales as a weightlifter would, for justice is heavy. She looks unflinchingly down upon us, as she is slightly elevated within the frame. She is real and powerful. She is far removed from the artificial beauty that is often slathered on the faces of young women in our world. She is our future and represents all the wonderful regular people/patients who are joining a worldwide conversation on health.

The babe in arms suckles in contentment in his mother’s embrace. He feels safe and secure, held by an arm that so often holds a sword in other depictions of justice. Why a babe and not a sword? We must change the way view problems and populations. Our tangled healthcare web is not a Gordian’s knot to be sliced through. It is a tapestry, now tangled, that must be rewoven upon the loom.

What tools will knit our raveled sleeve of healthcare? Twitter, Facebook, e-patients, new apps, and old medicine are tools we use combined. We must activate doctors, playwrights, musicians and techies and splice them onto the same reel. That is how we heal the child. That is how we heal ourselves.

Only by working together can we create great change. By finding and embracing this concept of Justice, we can set a new horizon.

The Forrest for the Trees: A jacket for Danielle Cass

There are two tiny jackets in The Walking Gallery.  One belongs to my son Isaac, he wears a boy’s size six.  The other jacket belongs to the energetic Danielle Cass.  Danielle works at Kaiser Permanente and she is a manager for the national public relations, media outreach and communications for KP.  Her jacket is tiny, a women’s size small with baby doll sleeves.  It almost looks like a jacket for a little girl.  I understand exactly why Danielle chose this jacket for this painting.  You see inside, Danielle is still a little girl with two wonderful parents.  And those wonderful parents have both been diagnosed with cancer.

Danielle’s parents are retired physicians who dedicated their careers to practicing in public hospitals, conducting health research, focusing on health education to the public and teaching residency programs.

In this picture Danielle’s parents hold her newborn son in the year 2000, before they were diagnosed with cancer.

Her dad is a urologist and introduced mobile lithotripsy to the Midwest.  He was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2002.  He has endured many surgeries, but still his cancer spreads and his treatment continues, with one complication after another.

Her mother, a family practitioner, opened the first health center for women in the United States in the mid-1980’s.  She also lectured widely about women's health.  Four years ago Danielle’s mother was diagnosed with melanoma skin cancer and advanced lymphoma.  These are two separate non-related cancers, yet she must be treated for both.  Danielle’ mother went through intense chemo, lost her hair, and the lymphoma went into remission. She continues on chemo every two months, and each month has more of her skin removed because of the cancerous lesions.

Danielle’s parents are on a path.  They are on a journey in the deepest forest of cancer care.  All of their years as providers can only help so much for now they are the patients.  Now they are stuck in a non-EMR supported non-integrated health care system.  They are scared and lost deep in the health care forest.  They are bewildered because the multiple providers who engage with them during their journey can’t seem to see the forest for the trees.

In this painting, Danielle’s parents stare into each other’s eyes.  Their gaze encompasses their deep love that spans decades.   But within this love there is also worry and confusion.  It feels as if within a moment they will walk arm in arm, supporting each other on that darkened path with its confusing signs and poorly lit corridors.  Unless you are a patient or have intimately cared for one, it is hard to understand how very scary and disempowering the patient’s journey can really be.

Before them is the forest and each tree is festooned with signs that tell them where to go next.  But often the instructions are contradictory and confusing.  Danielle’s parents find themselves going one way then another without any kind of healthcare GPS to lead the way.

Yes, I understand why Danielle picked this jacket.  She would like to remember a time when her parents were giants, and she was so small.  But that time has passed and the road is long.  It is Danielle’s time to listen to her parents distress and help them in anyway she can.  And she will do it and she will remember.  That experience will inform her life and her job, and help Kaiser Permanente and other health care systems see the forest and the trees.

A Post Script: Six Months Later

This is Danielle with her parents.  She had a chance to show them the jacket in person for the first time.  They were very moved especially when Danielle told them she had worn it on stage.



She wore her jacket at the Social Media Conference at the Mayo Clinic.  She stood out among a the crowd, but there were other walkers there to support.  Both Dave DeBronkart and David Harlow were walking as well.

She wore it again at HealthCamp LA, where she and Mark Scrimshire  led a group through their first unconference.  As they amazed the crowd with the wonderful immersion of open communication that the unconference model affords, they never turned their back on those assembled.  When you where a Walking Gallery jacket you are always face to face, whether it is with Danielle or with her parents.

I am a Kaiser Member

I often speak at conferences and hospitals throughout the United States about the care my husband received at 5 facilities in the 11 weeks he was hospitalized. And as the day progresses, I speak about my current experiences as a KP member. Some folks ask me if these things happened to my husband occurred while we were with KP. I tell them no, but because of them I joined Kaiser.

When Fred died we lost his insurance. Cobra payments were over $1,000 per month so I began to shop the private insurance market. I went with KP because they had a patient portal.

Last summer we had our first KP check-ups at West End Kaiser Permanente. It was an amazing experience. When I called to schedule our appointments, I spoke to a delightful lady at the appointment desk that gave me many choices of which days we could come in and never put me on hold. She then scheduled my labs before my appointment so I could discuss them with the doctor on the day of the physical. The labs arrived to My Health Manager patient portal and I saw them before I saw my Doctor. When I got to the appointment, the doctor was not rushed and he answered all my questions thoroughly and went through my lab results with me. Before I left the office, they made sure I scheduled an appointment with an ob/gyn as well.

The real exciting stuff happened during my son’s appointments. In the past I dreaded changing our doctor, as I would have to get the shot records and I knew the old practice tended to charge for a records transfer. KP said not to worry; they had already pulled the shot record out of the District of Columbia database. Also, I dreaded having to get school forms filled-out as that was a $25 charge per form. There was no charge for that at KP.

My four 4 year-old son’s appointment went extremely well. I was so proud of him as he told the nurse the symbols on the eye chart. I was especially pleased when he called the blue cross symbol the “hospital thing.”

When my 11 year old, began his appointment, we discovered a record error. KP had only pulled the District Shot records and since he attends Ivymount in MD they did not have his entire record. The doctor told us we need to take some labs and we should get the record and bring it in. I scheduled the lab appointment and got a copy of the shot record to drop off.

My eldest son was very stressed out about the lab work. We had rarely been able to take blood in the past without a major episode as he is on the autism spectrum. The lab tech at West End KP was very kind and helped him work through his fears. When we went upstairs to drop off the shot record, we were surprised that the nurse said we could do his needed immunizations right then and did not have to make a follow-up appointment. I was astounded and my son was scared.

I find with spectrum children it is very important to prepare them for what is coming next. In the past it had required 4 adults to restrain my son while giving him his shots. It was always traumatic. But something beautiful happened at West End KP.

The Doctor leaned over and looked my son in the eye and she asked him what could be done to make this experience less stressful. He looked at her a moment and said, “I like the feeling when that (blood-pressure) cuff hugged my arm. Maybe if it hugged my arm, while you gave me the shot it would not be so bad.” The doctor smiled and agreed they would try that. The nurse walked quickly away and rolled a vitals tower with pressure cuff into the room. They placed the cuff on his arm inflated it and gave him the shots.

It was over in seconds and my son’s face shone as bright as the sun, as he smiled and looked at me exclaiming, “It didn’t hurt Mommy, it didn’t hurt!” He was so proud and so was I. This had been the best doctor’s appointment he had ever had. And it had turned out so well because of a doctor who was willing to ask a question and to listen to the answer.

That, my friend, is patient centered care.

The Palliative Effect of Hair Styling

DSC_0238
Originally uploaded by health2con

I recently attended the Kaiser Permanente Executive Leadership Conference in Washington, DC. KP leaders gathered from all over the US for this event. At the opening of the meeting, KP showed a compilation of several videos to present my art advocacy mission supporting patient access to the medical record and the painting 73 Cents. It was a very powerful video, and after watching it, several members of the audience came up to talk to me about … my hair color.


I am one those people blessed to have been every hair color. I was born with a thick head of black hair. In a month or so, it fell out and came in blond. As I grew, my hair turned red and was that color for many years. By the age of 8, my hair was light brown. In my teens, my hair turned to a dark brown. With having such an amazing array of colors in my youth, I found I didn’t feel constrained to any one color, and in my twenties, I decided to lighten my hair back to the red of my childhood. When Fred grew ill, I was still the light red I had been for many years. After Fred died and I began my painting advocacy, I continued to keep my hair a light red. While working on 73 Cents, I spent days painting in the bright sun, which bleached my hair even lighter.

As the months of painting and grief progressed, I looked at my roots coming in completely gray. I now could truly say I had had every color of hair. But I am only 38 and do not plan to go gently in that gray night. So I went to a local salon for a color consultation. The nice stylists there told me I should go darker as it would look nicer with my complexion.

I submitted to their excellent advice. While I sat in the chair, I spoke to the stylist about hair and cancer. I told her about my husband’s 10-week hospitalization. After about six weeks, his hair had grown so long. We inquired about barber services. The hospital informed us there was a nice lady who performed haircuts for patients. She was very nice, but she did not have a lot of skill with cutting the hair of a bedridden patient. The entire experience turned into a farce that Fred, his folks, and I shared with friends for weeks to come.

After I shared my story with my hairdresser, she told me a tale of her own. She told me how she was the last one to shampoo and style her mom’s hair while her mother was in home hospice. It was a beautiful tale. It made me want to cry. I could almost see her hands gently washing her mother's hair. I could hear the happiness and sorrow she felt in her attempt to help her mother. Yes, she made her mother feel pretty; but this offered more than that. She touched her mother. She caressed her at a point in her life when she so need to be touched. She anointed her hair with oil…

So I am not bothered that the most asked question after viewing a video of 73 Cents was about my hair. I know often when we talk of hair, we might also be talking about beauty and death. Perhaps I have gone darker … because I have gone darker. Like Dark Willow or Dark Phoenix, I am not the same as when I started.


I brought two portfolios with me to the KP conference. One is light and cheery; it is my "before" album. For so many people ask if I was always an artist; I have always been an artist. I used to paint book characters and children's bedroom murals. The before portfolio shows the work I have done with children for the past eight years. The "after" portfolio is for the Medical Advocacy Mural Project. It is filled with images that often disturb but still retain hope. I like to create images that make you think, even if they tend to cause upset. This portfolio is darker, but there are still windows of light. This portfolio contains medical murals, jackets with patient images, and canvases I paint on-site at conferences.

Recently at Health 2.0 in San Francisco, I met a very beautiful woman named Diem Brown, and I painted her sadness. Diem was only 23 when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She found herself adrift with no one to ask for help. Wedding and baby shower invitations were arriving in the mail while Diem was struggling to pay for chemotherapy wigs and to arrange drivers to her various medical appointments. She thought, “Why is this so hard? Why isn’t there a registry for cancer sufferers like those that exist for brides?” Due to Diem’s valiant effort such registry exists now, and it is called MedGift. Her story touched me so that I painted it into the Health 2.0 painting Bridging the Great Divide.

In this part of that painting, the bride is combined with the cancer patient. The best point in her life is combined with the worst. The sorrow is palpable. The cancer bride's hair is falling out, and strands are held in her hand. She is reaching for the apple of knowledge. In that apple is placed an eye. Knowledge without vision helps no one.


Weeks after I painted this, I was sent the wedding photos of Katie Kirkpatrick. If you have never seen these photos, I recommend you take a moment to view them. Katie was suffering from end stage cancer when she married her high school sweetheart. Under her lovely gown her limbs were swelling as her organs began to shut down. Just glancing at the photos made me cry, as I saw a body so similar to Fred’s before his death. She was dying and she was beautiful and … her hair was so pretty. She died five days after her wedding.


Thank you, Diem, for sharing your vision with us all. I am sure there are many people who will thank you for creating MedGift to help them when things seem their worst. Thank you, Katie, for sharing photos of your happiest day while so sick; we shall never forget you.

And thanks to the folks at the Kaiser Permantente who were brave enough to invite a cancer widow to an executive conference to remind us ...we are all patients in the end.