I am clueless about many things. As in the definition: “Lacking understanding or knowledge.” As in the sentence: “I have no clue!” As in the 20+ years I spent living with a research scientist and enduring mind-numbingly torturous dinner party conversations about zinc and copper sediment in the Fraser River estuary.
That kind of clueless.
Continue reading “If you’re clueless and you know it . . .”
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
It took a while to improve upon the humble pedometer. This wearable device, typically attached on or near one’s waist, has been tracking how many steps and how much distance we travel each day ever since its invention by Abraham-Louis Perrelet back in 1780.
But with the explosion of wearable digital activity trackers on the market, I’m now waiting for the randomized control trial that compares those fancy-schmancy new devices head to head with that simple old-fashioned pedometer. In other words:
Q: Just because you make it digital, does it make it better?
Continue reading “Self-tracking device? Got it. Tried it. Ditched it.”
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”
by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
Shortly after arriving at Stanford University School of Medicine to attend the conference called Medicine X (“at the intersection of medicine and emerging technologies”), it hit me that I didn’t quite belong there. Maybe, I wondered, the conference organizers (like the profoundly amazing Dr. Larry Chu) might have goofed by awarding me an “ePatient Scholarship“ – rather than a more tech-savvy, wired and younger patient in my stead.
Please don’t get me wrong – I was and still am duly thrilled and humbled to be chosen as one of 30 participants invited to attend MedX as ePatient scholars, generously funded by Alliance Health based on meeting selection criteria like “a history of patient engagement, community outreach and advocacy”.
But almost immediately, I started feeling like a bit of a fraud. Continue reading “When the elephant in the room has no smartphone”
Heart Sisters 