Fun things first. In honor of this third anniversary, I'm giving away one copy of Caring Lessons: A Nursing Professor's Journey of Faith and Self. All you have to do to qualify for a drawing is make a comment on this post. On Wednesday, September 25, I will randomly select one winner, contact that winner …
Continue reading Caring Lessons Celebrates Third Anniversary
That line was the funniest one I heard last week. The context? Imagine retirees, and the gal saying this to her husband. I’m sure you can conjure up many scenes that you want to say, perhaps yell, that line. Before I retired in 2000 I was aware of potential problems with Marv and me being …
I will always remember the phone call from my friend: “I’ve got cancer.” Was she joking? No, not with that taut tone of voice. Marianna and I were friends who happened to be nurses. Before that phone call, we’d joke that any of our abnormal symptoms—bleeding, headache, constipation—was cancer. We didn’t mean it, but it …
Continue reading DCIS: Breast Cancer or a Precancer? – My Experience as a Friend
Ask my husband about the hazards of marrying a PK, and he’s likely to tell you, “Be ready to drive off the highway at any inopportune moment.” You see, growing up as a preacher’s kid, I lived in five states. Marv was born and raised on the same farm. So by the time we met …
I believe, along with “you are what you say” and “you are what you eat”, that “you are what you read.” So I was curious to read a recent Tribune article1 by Nara Schoenberg that cited Andrew Hill’s The Best Books You Will Never Read…Ever and listed the top ten. My immediate reaction was to …
Sir George Solti, former Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, received company in his namesake garden of Grant Park yesterday. These photos show the guests eager to mingle with all! Visit them at Michigan Ave and E. Jackson Dr. They will stay until spring. Let's hope they like our winters!
Last week I praised my internist’s therapeutic communication skills and promised I’d write about some bad experiences soon that I’ve had during my nearly 15-year history of fibromyalgia. So today is the time to give you one example that still floors me years later.Some back story. When I taught nursing, therapeutic communication was my favorite …
Continue reading How is your doctor’s nonverbal communication?
“Don’t let it happen again,” said Marianna Crane, my nurse practitioner friend. I could hear the disbelief in her voice. Marianna and I share a history of graduating from diploma schools of nursing in the early sixties. At that time, a visible hierarchy existed in health care. Doctors were treated like gods. And, even though Marianna …
Continue reading Therapeutic Communication Skills – An Essential in Health Care
If you have a loved one living with either one of these illnesses and would like to understand them better, then Ka Hancock’s Dancing on Broken Glass is a compelling, informative read. Hancock, as a nurse in the clinical specialty of psychiatry, dives into the minds of Mickey and Lucy as they forge a life …
Continue reading Living with Bipolar Illness or Breast Cancer
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