Design a beautiful day today

May 19, 2013March 14, 2015 ~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 10 Comments

Regular readers will already know that I’m a fan of Dr. Martin Seligman’s work. He’s the author of Learned Optimism and a number of other books I’ve found useful, especially for those of us who have been body-slammed by a life-altering medical diagnosis and are trying to somehow salvage some shred of sense-making out of the whole mess.

Oh, sure. You may already be thinking: it’s so easy for healthy people to feel positive. But what about when you’re a patient living with debilitating symptoms, hospital admissions, fistfuls of meds, scary side effects, diagnostic tests, medical appointments, hospital re-admissions, and distressing procedures? Don’t you need to be healthy to be truly happy? Continue reading “Design a beautiful day today” →

News flash: care improves when doctors consider the whole person

May 15, 2013January 3, 2022 ~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 11 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters

When I worked in hospice palliative care, I remember being gobsmacked one day while reading in a medical journal about Dr. Harvey Chochinov’s research on Dignity Therapy out of the Manitoba Palliative Care Research Unit.(1) His studies determined that – wait for it! – patients feel better when their doctors listen to them. This of course sounds like a no-brainer until it hits you upside the head that, apparently, not all doctors know this fact to be true unless it’s published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Is it actually possible, I wondered at the time, that doctors thumbing through journals madly take notes when they discover a surprisingly shocking news flash like this?

Recently, I ran across yet another fine example of the bleedin’ obvious that makes me crazy-go-nuts, as my Ukrainian relatives would say. Continue reading “News flash: care improves when doctors consider the whole person” →

Why I’m nothing like – yet just like – my mother

May 11, 2013February 2, 2020 ~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 16 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters

www.myheartsisters.org A few months ago, my favourite son Ben and I stopped by the annual fundraising luncheon and sale of Ukrainian tchotchkes – цяцьки – at St. Nicholas the Wonder Worker Ukrainian Catholic Church. (Ukrainian churches here in Canada often have fancy-schmancy mouthful names like this: Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Ukrainian Catholic Church or St. Demetrius The Martyr Ukrainian Orthodox Church, or those simply named for obscure saints you’ve likely never heard of – like the churches of St. Paraskevia or St. Onufry).

We sat doing some first-class people-watching and borsch-eating while observing the women cooking, talking and laughing together in the church kitchen. I was struck by an intense frisson of nostalgia. “These are my people!” I whispered to Ben. And as I said that, I had a strange and unbidden craving for a piece of pie. Continue reading “Why I’m nothing like – yet just like – my mother” →