Monthly Archives: August 2015

Liebster Award Nomination!

Posted on by
5

My most humble and sincere thanks to Nicola Auckland and Kat Myrman for nominating me for the Liebster Award!  What better way to end Week 2 of Blogging 101 than to exchange this kind of acknowledgement and encouragement?  Thank you, thank you!

I feel like I’ve just moved into a wonderful new town, with throngs of welcoming neighbors, all who own unique and beautiful shops filling the diverse downtown square.  I have to work, but my mind wanders to downtown, trying to remember which stores I want to visit afterward.  I can’t wait for the weekend, to explore all I want!  Thank you, my fellow bloggers, for your warm welcome!  I will set up my own shop here, and continue getting to know the neighbors, day by day.

I hereby nominate some of you, as per nomination rules (see below).  I know some of you have been mentioned already, but I want to add my acknowledgement of your excellent work!  Here’s to our amazing little (not so little?) town, and may we have a collective positive impact on our world!

  1. Nicola Auckland writes fiction.  I normally don’t read fiction, but her ‘attempts’ at creative writing grabbed me instantly and made me follow!
  2. Kat Myrman writes everything with wonder and wisdom.  You can get poems or recipes, check out her blog!
  3. Sandy Sue shares her experiences living with bipolar disorder, in the most articulate and insightful ways I have ever encountered.  I intend to learn much from her.
  4. Nancy Faerber was one of the first blogging neighbors to extend a welcome when I moved onto the block.  Her thoughtful writing helps me reflect and connect.
  5. Pam Kirst, a fellow pen and paper enthusiast, has much wisdom to share–a teacher, mother, writer, and thinker.
  6. Audrey D Cunningham writes about her faith, its origins and evolution, and keeps it simple, like PB&J.
  7. Donna Cameron may be my sister from another life.  She writes with deep conviction that her mission in life is to make the world a better place.  I think it’s working.
  8. Michelle, another student of the Inner Work, challenges me to learn and apply everyday lessons.  She validates the struggle to live authentically, to Walk the Talk, with compassion and kindness.
  9. Anand is my new friend on WordPress!  A prolific blogger driven by love and wonder, whose apt blog title “Vibrant” only begins to describe his blogging presence.
  10. James provides comic relief from the daily grind, especially when I imagine his words in a British accent.
  11. Rachel Griffin, a young woman, shares her complex life with humor, poetry, and art.  And she uses emoticons, a woman after my own heart.

My Answers to Questions from Kat:

  1. If you could interview one person from history, who would that be? …Nelson Mandela, Maya Angelou, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., Elizabeth Blackwell, Margaret Thatcher, Madeline Albright, Richard Feynman, can’t decide.
  2. What makes you happy?  …To see my kids happy, being in nature, communing with my tribe(s).
  3. Pick a number from 1 to 10. Now tell me why. …8.  It’s round and smooth, and looks like the symbol for infinity–no beginning, no end, all connected, forever.
  4. If you could live anywhere, where would it be?  …Summit County, Colorado.
  5. What inspires you to write?  …Life and all its complexities.
  6. What is your favorite color?  …All shades of blue.
  7. What types of books to you most often choose to read?  …Psychology, emotional intelligence, memoirs and writings of people I admire.
  8. What is your astrological sign?  …Leo.  Some would say Virgo, but I’m a Leo, trust me.
  9. Dogs or Cats?  …Dogs.
  10. What is your favorite song?  …”Ticks,” by Brad Paisley.
  11. When you are not writing, how do you spend your days?  …Thinking about writing, seeing patients, thinking about patients, parenting, thinking about parenting, connecting with friends, trying to live in the moment, wherever and whatever I’m doing…

My Answers to Questions from Nicola:

  1. What was the most inspiring book you read?  …_The Art of Possibility_ by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander since 2009, and now also _Start With Why_ by Simon Sinek.  I read and listen to them both again and again.
  2. What song gets you “pumped”?  …”Beer For My Horses” by Toby Keith and Willie Nelson, and almost anything by Brad Paisley.
  3. How have you created meaning in your life?  …By maintaining excellent connections with fellow students of the Inner Work.
  4. What are you working on at the moment?  …My blog as platform for a future book, building awesome collaborations with a diverse group of amazing people.
  5. Any other interests besides writing/ blogging?  …Making greeting cards, public speaking, reading, communing with friends.
  6. What is you favourite time of the year?  …All times that are not winter in Chicago.
  7. What do you enjoy most about blogging?  …The community.
  8. Do you believe in love at first sight?  …Yes.
  9. Are you multi-lingual or know parts of a few others?  …Yes.
  10. If you had live this life again on repeat, would you?  …Yes.
  11. Who was your first follower on WordPress?  …Linda at The Task At Hand.

Below are my questions for the people I nominated (I vote that previously nominated bloggers may claim exemption, if they wish!).  Please feel free to comment your answers to any or all, regardless of your nomination status! 🙂

  1. What inspires you?
  2. How do you aim to inspire others?
  3. What do you most admire in a leader?
  4. What gives you meaning in your work?
  5. What personality trait has been the most enduring and representative of you?
  6. What genre of movie do you like best, and how has it evolved over your adult life?
  7. Who is your hero?
  8. Where do you feel most at peace?
  9. What song makes you sing along out loud, and/or break into dance?
  10. What do you want people to remember most about you after meeting you for the first time?
  11. What are you most proud of?

Once again, my most sincere thanks to all of my neighbors and classmates.  Planning to live here a while! 🙂

The rules:

  1. Make a post thanking and linking the person who nominated you.
    Include the Liebster Award sticker in the post too.
  2. Nominate 5 -10 other bloggers who you feel are worthy of this award. Let them know they have been nominated by commenting on one of their posts. You can also nominate the person who nominated you.
  3. Ensure all of these bloggers have less than 200 followers.
  4. Answer the eleven questions asked to you by the person who nominated you, and make eleven questions of your own for your nominees or you may use the same questions.
  5. Lastly, COPY these rules in your post.

Who Are You and Why Have You Come?

Posted on by
15

Is that a line from a movie?  No, it’s assignment #4 for Blogging 101, “Identify Your Audience: Publish a post you’d like your ideal audience member to read, and include a new-to-you element in it.”  Okay, here goes!

Welcome back, how was your week?  What phenomenal doctor-patient encounters did you experience, witness, or hear about since we last met?  What made them so?  Or maybe they were less than stellar…  I wouldn’t be surprised, unfortunately.  What made them so, and what can be done to make them better?

If you think the physician-patient relationship plays an essential role in our healthcare system and patients’ overall wellness, please read on.  If you think this relationship also plays a central role in physician wellness, welcome!  So do I.  Maybe you are a physician.  Most likely you have been a patient, or a patient’s family member, somewhere along the way.  I know you could be both.  It doesn’t matter, if you think the physician-patient relationship is important, and you want to help make it better for yourself and others, then I’m writing to you!

For a moment, think of our healthcare system as a vast, dense forest on a dark, moonless night.  It’s early fall in the Rockies, crisp and chilly tonight.  You are either the physician or the patient, and you are here alone, tasked with finding your counterpart, somewhere else in the forest.  Maybe you’ve never been here before, and you’re scared.  You’ve only heard about it, or walked through in virtual simulations.  Maybe you’ve hiked here many times already, and feel quite confident–cocky, even.  But every encounter in this forest is unique.  Insurance plans, drug formularies, government regulations, and technology can alter the topography like lightning strikes and wildfires–and almost as quickly.

The objective is to find your way to each other, and then journey together to the place in the forest where at least the patient can camp in health.  If you really work well together, then the doctor will also find solace in that spot.  What would that look like?  What will you need?

You’ll need to identify dangers in the forest–most of which you cannot control.  They will affect you both in different ways, and it will help if you know the potential consequences ahead of time, for yourself as well as the other.  You’ll need to learn each other’s strengths, vulnerabilities, tendencies, and talents.  You’ll need to know your own needs and limits, and those of your partner.  And wouldn’t it be great if you had a map and a plan?

I have just described the ideal physician-patient relationship.  How can we do all of this?  With tools, I say!  We would never enter a forest to camp at night without the appropriate gear.  So why do we so often enter the physician-patient relationship in this way?  Until very recently, physicians received almost no formal training on effective communication and interpersonal skills.  I think we were expected either to be thusly gifted by virtue of being smart enough to get into medical school, or to ‘pick it up’ along the way.  I also think patients’ expectations today vary so widely based on personal experience and circumstances, that sometimes it’s a miracle that we understand each other at all.

The tools I explore in this blog–mindfulness, compassion, empathy, reflective listening, patience, self-awareness, stress-management, collaboration, and others—are intended for patient and physician campers alike, but only the ones truly interested in achieving the objective above—finding one another, walking together, and finding the best place for both parties to set up camp and stay a while.

I seek fellow campers! Tell me your stories! Show me the tools that work for you! What have you learned? What advice have you for our frightened novices or frustrated (disillusioned, burned out, cynical) elders? Let us find one another, clear our own authentic spaces in the dark forest, and build our campsites intentionally, deliberately, with respect for one another and the forest ecosystem. Once we have our eco-friendly doctor-patient camps firmly established, maybe we can start to clean up the litter and pollution in the forest, too—but that might be another blog…

Who Am I and Why Am I Here?

Posted on by
20

I’m a student again!  Blogging 101 is the first class I have taken in maybe decades.  This is my first assignment–Introduce Yourself to the World.

I’m a writer! Since I can remember, I’ve written. I learned about mail in second grade and cheerily wrote letters to our student teacher, Miss Bruce, all summer. I think postage was about $0.05 back then. I passed notes to friends in middle school. I looked forward to writing essays in high school, and always felt a rush as I typed them late at night. I submitted a paper on the contribution of Chinese workers to the Transcontinental Railroad to The Concord Review after graduation—ya gotta love writing to spend summer vacation doing that! Intermediate Composition, which I took in my junior year at Northwestern, taught by Charles Yarnoff, was a turning point for me. I learned that quarter the true great potential of words, and that I could wield them. That was 21 years ago, and this past winter, when I received the brochure for a writing conference for healthcare professionals at Harvard, my soul leapt for joy and I knew I stood at the threshold of something big. Thursday morning, before for the conference started, I had no intention of blogging. By Saturday afternoon I was scrambling to secure a domain name from my phone on the cab ride to the airport. It is time.

I’m a physician, wife, mom, daughter of immigrants, almost native Coloradoan, and lover of nature and Brad Paisley! Turns out, as I reflect, I’m also a connector. Growing up I merged Chinese and American culture into my own expression of self, which has served me well. At work I became interested in integrative medicine, and today I stand confidently with one foot each in the conventional and complementary medicine hemispheres. I can sit in a room with people from different backgrounds and with divergent interests, and find common goals.

I’m here on WordPress to connect patients and physicians again! Technology, pharmaceuticals, and large medical organizations all contribute greatly to the fight against disease and disability, but they often get in the way of the patient-physician relationship. And it is only our relationships that truly heal. I have a specific point of view on this (see my first post), and blogging allows me to express it freely, in hopes of connecting with others to share and discuss.

When I go home to Colorado, I like to visit Red Rocks, the renowned natural amphitheater. The great iron-laden land formations inspire and soothe me. Once I happened upon a Native American drumming circle on stage. It was the middle of a typically sunny Colorado day, with tourists milling about, and local athletes taking advantage of the seating steps for interval training. The timbre of the drumbeats impressed me, and vibrated to my core. This is how I see my blogging. I beat my drum to my own authentic rhythm. The blogosphere is my amphitheater, which I share with other drummers from around the world. When those striking resonant sound waves find me, we drum in coherence. Our collective rhythms synergize and create a movement of communication and mutual respect, toward the health and well-being of patients and physicians alike. Wouldn’t that be great?

If I keep it up, by one year from now, I hope my style and content will have matured a little.  I look forward to making more friends in the blogosphere, and learning about people’s experiences in our healthcare system.  I want to contribute to productive dialogue and mindfulness of the common humanity that, in my opinion, should lie at the heart of all healthcare.