The Sami people of Northern Scandinavia and Russia have over 180 words for snow and ice. Linguists and anthropologists talk about the evolution of a language as tied to ideas and needs that are most crucial to those who speak it. Our basic needs are food, water, shelter and sharing. When reading patient blogs, what Ernest Hemingway says about...
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“You’ve gotta dance like there’s nobody watching, Love like you’ll never be hurt, Sing like there’s nobody listening, And live like it’s heaven on earth.”~William W. Purkey In the northern hemisphere, it is deep midwinter…the ground is hard as iron and water’s like a stone. It is the darkest time of the year, especially...
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(This post is by guest blogger Rann Patterson and contains her personal views and opinions). (Updated Jan 15, 2014: To correct error in identity of app highlighted). Cancer patients usually have lymph nodes removed during surgery. The lymphatic system can be thought of, by analogy, as a person’s “water system” and works in tandem with the...
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Hi all! A year ago, most likely 99% of you have yet to hear of “Medivizor”. As 2013 comes to an end, I wanted to update you about the progress we have made during this landmark year for Medivizor. But first, if you are reading this, you are already a critical part of the Medivizor revolution and I wanted to thank you for your participation, support,...
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Food… Grandma is from Iowa…grew up on a farm. She milked cows, fed chickens, chopped wood and watched the nation change. Electricity didn’t come to their farm until she was a teen. Richness in her life is measured in stories. And many of these stories are about food. Like the stories of cooking with her new daughter in-law from Korea…how...
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The Infographic above created by Hello Doctor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License and shared here with Hello Doctor’s full permission. Source data from the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) in these two...
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Matthew Katz, MD is Medical Director, Radiation Oncology at Lowell General Hospital in the Greater Boston Area. But those on Twitter and in the blogosphere know him as “subatomicdoc”: a ‘handle’ he’s been using for a number of years on the Internet. Thursday December 12, Dr. Katz was the guest on the Health Communication, Health Literacy and...
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Physician Parents When your parents are both physicians, you have a unique perspective on the health care system. This is especially true for me because of the time when I grew up. During those days, on call physicians didn’t leave the phone calls to an answering service at night. Our phone would ring, my father would answer it at all hours and would...
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Last month we published results of a survey about how patients discuss Internet health information with their doctors. Here are the results of a survey of doctors on LinkedIn and Twitter conducted in October that included 17 doctors. Despite the small number of Internet-savvy participants, this material is a window into the thoughts of physicians who...
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Did you know that the average person has over 30,000 thoughts a day? Healing Your Mental Past In survivorship, maintaining a balanced thought-life is crucial. If you have endured a chaotic or abusive past before having cancer or a chronic condition, it is imperative that you get your mind settled and at rest. I had that type of past and know the weight...
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On Your Mark, (Lather Up) Get Set (Grab That Razor), GO… SHAVE! It’s December and all the men who grew their mustaches in November get to shave! What? You didn’t know about this? It is because of Movember. Has anyone seen this typo recently? Well, it’s not a typo…it is actually a fund-raising campaign with an International...
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Many With Lung Cancer Never Smoked There’s a movement afoot–energized by parents, children, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters– to change the language of cancer prevention. Why? Because the number 1 cancer–lung cancer– is the least funded, is often caught late and has a very poor prognosis. And by the way, lots of people...
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