How To Be (A) Patient: Relatable Health Stories to Validate Your Experience, with Lessons for YOU

It has been a wild ride, my career in health and fitness. I've had the pleasure and privilege of meeting countless amazing people with diverse backgrounds and unique stories about their experiences with their own health and the healthcare system.

In this series, I want to tell stories about people with whom you might share some things in common. Maybe it's the same gender identity and age, maybe it's the same injury or other diagnosis, or maybe it's similar struggles and barriers to excellent resources and care.

With each story, I hope you might find what you’re looking for. It could be some validation, words of support and wisdom, and maybe even some easily actionable steps you can take to learn from others' misfortunes and avoid a similar discouraging experience.

This series is about YOU…the people. There’s plenty of information out there about the science and diagnoses and the treatment options. All of it has some value. What I want to do here, though, is give you answers about the experience of health and seeking support for your own health, as well as how to consume the information, the resources, and the care. It’s about empowerment and learning how to navigate the system.

If I gave you a book and you didn’t know how to read, how useful would that book be to you?

Now, if I gave you lessons on how to read, I could give you even more books and you’d get something out of all of them, right?

Teach a man how to fish, y’know?

You’re going to learn how to read the healthcare system, how to fish for the right, valid, and useful information for you specifically.

Read on and learn how to avoid long waiting room times, waits for appointments, countless tests that make no sense to you why you’re undergoing them, impersonal experiences with multiple strangers in uniform, hidden costs, heartache, runaround, no answers, and wasted emotional energy.

Read on to become an expert in getting what you want and need from your healthcare system!