The Female Condition

I know Michelle by a superhero name.  She is @cyberslate on Twitter and her avatar is a green She-Hulk.  She is super cool.  But I didn’t know how cool until the mHealth Summit, for as I left the hall on Monday.  I heard, “Is that you Regina?”  I whipped around to see Michelle.  I asked if she would like to split a cab with me as it is rather expensive to get back to the city from Washington Harbor.  She said, No, she had driven out, but would be glad to give me a lift back.  She proceeded to give me lifts to and from the conference for the next two days.  We talked about everything under the sun including the female condition.

Now you may think I mean that we spoke role of women in tech, and we did speak a little on that.  After all Michelle is the Enterprise architect and founder of the Women in SharePoint, DC.  But we spoke specifically of her jacket for The Walking Gallery.

This is Michelle Strah’s jacket: “The Female Condition.”

This is a painting of Wonder Woman. 

But this is very different Wonder Woman.  She is a patient and she has suffered from domestic violence.  Her eye is bruised; her customary golden tiara has been replaced with a bandage that seeps blood.  Her indestructible golden bracelets are removed and in their place is a layered mesh of hospital bracelets that coil around her arms.  Her hospital gown is half torn off, revealing most of one breast.  This is the kind of hospital gown that snaps across the shoulders.  It is never good to be in one of these gowns, it means the patient is using an IV and cannot take off a traditional gown.

This is a sick and injured Wonder Woman.  But look at her; so brave, so willing to take on the unjust world.  She arches her back and bares her chest.  Her arms are loose with muscle well-defined and she is ready for a quick defense.   These words she issues forth, “Being female is not a pre-existing condition.”

Cyberslate is brilliant.  She has a PHD and can talk circles around most tech gurus.  I could paint so many pictures about his woman, but this is the most important one.

For even Wonder Woman can fall, even the best and brightest among us can feel the steel gauntlet of abuse.  And when that happens, or if that happens, we want to be treated with dignity and respect.  We want to be able to receive treatment at any hospital in this fair country without losing future health insurance coverage due to our status as a victim.  

Thank you Cyberslate for your willingness to speak out for us all, it is your bravery that shall rule the day. When I painted this I thought of you as the lone Amazon fighting against a world of injustice, but now I know you are a super friend.

I learned the origin of Cyberslate. I learned that on August 5^th, 2009 Michelle was a new resident of DC and to meet friends who shared her interests she decided to join a brand new meet-up group: Health 2.0 Stat.  That night she performed her first ignite-style speech.  She was one of three speakers.  The other two were David Hale from NIH and Mark Scrimshire organizer of the ever popular Health Camps. 

It was amazing night. 

After their speeches David and Mark found out that Michelle had never heard of Twitter. Right then and there they built her profile and Cyberslate was born.
 

On that day some super friends began to meet each other.  But they had no idea we would one day don our capes and mantles.  We had no idea that our group of healthcare heroes would one day walk as a mighty force of justice called The Walking Gallery.   

It's only an egg.

I have followed Gregg Masters as @2Healthguru on twitter since the summer of 2010.  He has such a clear and powerful voice in our health care social media world.  In his photo avatar his long white hair gives him the look of an elder or sage.  In June of 2011, I saw Greg in real life.  We were both participating in health innovation week DC and in meeting after meeting Gregg had amazing things to say.   His unique voice was even more powerful in person.  His hair white was shorn close and his every movement displayed vitality and vigor. 

We stood in an archway of a crowded room and discussed our lives.  We were both single parents working in health care.  We could completely empathize with each other’s plight of spending time away from our children, in order to travel and do our life mission.  Gregg’s babes have long since grown, but he had walked this path before me and understood.  As I talked with Gregg, I felt the serenity of his presence and it seemed as though he was filled with a powerful and soulful energy.  When I looked at Gregg, he sparkled.  So, that is how I painted him. 

This is “It’s only an egg,” Gregg Masters jacket.

The background of the piece is a rainbow of contrasting colors swirling together in a vortex.  Upon these writhing streams of color a scarab beetle slowly walks.  Here the beetle represents the journey Gregg takes.  It represents the concept of hope and rebirth.  It represents the years of hard work, rolling the dung-ball uphill, to reach a point of personal fulfillment and professional success.

In front of the scarab beetle Greg Stands.  He smiles he his little half-smile as if sharing an in-joke with God.  His sunglasses cover his eyes without distancing his soul, and an inner fire rises from his shoulders.  

In Greg’s hand he holds a nest and an egg within.    A series of Twitter birds fly away from the egg, as though scouting food, delivering messages or preparing the world for a new birth.

This jacket is the story of our movement of participatory medicine.  Gregg’s voice is a voice that refuses to be silent, refuses to give up.  In the daily grind of institutional medicine, there are many who say, “That is just the way it is.”  “Nothing will ever change.”  But Gregg cries out, Gregg questions.  Gregg pecks at the interior of the shell and spreads fissures and cracks in the old way of doing business.

He may look harmless, he may look saintly, and he may seem to be only an egg.  But Gregg will break forth, and with many other disruptive ones, Gregg will fly.  

Friendship Pins

Do you remember Friendship Pins? 

They make me think of connections: the connections that link letters into words and the connections that link strangers into chains of friends.  When I was in fourth grade, I learned to read and I learned about the power of friendship pins.

Before that year, words were such a disjointed and confusing puzzle.  I would sound out words laboriously within the lowest reading group.  I would wince with frustration as I heard my halting sentences, while across the room the "gold reading group" raced through the hardest passages with ease.

Then I met my fourth grade teacher Mrs. Graham. 

She was so kind.  She taught me the simplest lessons.  She gave me 10 spelling words like cat while the rest of the class had 20 words like encyclopedia.  She would praise any small accomplishment and put huge happy faces on my work.  Under Mrs. Graham's tutelage I began to blossom as a scholar.

Whilst I was learning the correct way to spell and read, a playground trend was emerging.  Friendship pins.  Unlike the popular trend of wearing Guess jeans that would follow the friendship pin craze, this had a low threshold of entry.  Even the poorest among us could afford a pack of safety pins and beads.  Each of us began creating our own signature pin and began trading with others.  You could easily tell the most popular students from the other students in school as they had the most "followers" or shall I say pins?  I knew one girl who had a chain of over 100 unique pins that she wore wrapped around her body.  

All of these thoughts ran through my mind as I pondered David Harlow’s Jacket.  Do you know David?  For the past two years I have known him as @healthblawg on Twitter.  He always has such insightful things to say about medicine, law and Meaningful Use.

I especially like his wordles.  This is one of David’s designs.  It was based upon the proposed rule for Meaningful Use.

Do you like wordles? I do.  I love the truth they show.  I love the idea of taking a document, any document, and analyzing intent by word frequency and then displaying it in such a visual and colorful way. 

When I saw David’s Wordle, I saw Friendship Pins.

In this painting, a strong hand is flexed open and stretched taunt between thumb and pinky finger is a friendship bracelet woven in the colors of the Rainbow Button Initiative.  Dangling upon that woven line is a complex network of friendship pins.  Each pin, big or small, is latched one upon the other forming a Wordle of Twitter hash tags.  

The pins say things like #CMS, #ONC #HHS and #HCSM.  These are tags taken directly out of David’s twitter feed.  You see David is a connector bridging many worlds.  He can comfortably expound upon law, medicine, social media and patient advocacy.  At Health 2.0 this past week he did exactly that.  While I painted during the Patient’s 2.0 session on the 25^th in San Francisco, David attended the Law session as a Walking member of The Walking Gallery. 

David did what David does best.  He made connections, both within his mind and between the attendees assembled. 

He did that with a painting on his back in session filled with those who analyze the law.  He represented us patients by wearing a painting of pins in a wordle writ large and Meaningful.  

When I think of David, I think of the web of friendship we are building and the wonder of being able to read, for that is what he does for us.  He decodes the arcane and presents in an easy to understand format.  As he teaches us to “read” he connects us one to other and we are so very blessed.