Tag: healthy privilege

When we don’t look as sick as we feel

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 44 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

One morning during the last century, I overheard two of my hospital co-workers chatting over coffee at the hospice palliative care unit where we’d worked together for several years. They were talking about one of our colleagues who had been off work on an extended sick leave. One said to the other:

“Oh, I saw ____ the other day. She was out riding her BICYCLE!” 

The way she said the word ‘bicycle’ stuck with me, tossed off with that pared down judgmental tone we use when what we really want to say is: “Hmph… Must be nice!”  The tone somehow implied that anybody who can hop on a bike and toodle around the neighbourhood on a sunny day couldn’t be THAT sick, could they?  Continue reading “When we don’t look as sick as we feel” →

‘Healthy Privilege’ – when you just can’t imagine being sick

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 43 Comments

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by Carolyn Thomas    ♥   @HeartSisters

Have you had the experience of knowing something intuitively, but without realizing that the thing you know already has a name?  For example, have you ever found yourself limping along on the losing end of an argument, yet  only much later (when it was far too late!) you suddenly thought of just the perfectly witty retort that you should have come up with? 

There’s a name for that. The French call this ‘l’esprit d’escalier’, literally “the wit of the staircase”.  You’re welcome.

Similarly, I’ve been writing for some time about my niggling frustration over something else that I didn’t even realize had an actual name.  Continue reading “‘Healthy Privilege’ – when you just can’t imagine being sick” →

“Live a healthy life, then die quickly at 90”

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 8 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas    ♥  @HeartSisters

woman funny oldYou’d hardly expect a physician who spends his life trying to cure cancer to suddenly shift gears and suggest that maybe, just maybe, we should “stop trying”. But it turns out that New Jersey oncologist Dr. James Salwitz agrees with a review of data published in the September 2012 issue of Lancet Oncology, entitled “First Do No Harm: Counting the Cost of Chasing Drug Efficacy.” *

An accompanying Lancet editorial suggests that during the 10 years between 2000 and 2010, “many new cancer drugs produced marginal extensions in survival and simultaneously increased risk of treatment-associated death and side effects.”  This compelled Dr. Salwitz to write:    Continue reading ““Live a healthy life, then die quickly at 90”” →