Healers who Listen

Reverse the reality drawing and it looks like a survival curve for congestive heart failure. #hpmhttps://twitter.com/thelaceylondon/status/1103357296426577922 …

If you work in a healthcare facility, you have the opportunity to be a healer at any moment. Your letters don't matter at all.https://twitter.com/ahmedhankir/status/1097494815648948231 …

I talk a lot about understanding a person's Lifeworld before any real healing can happen. This article is a sobering reminder of what that Lifeworld often looks like.https://twitter.com/PCareProgress/status/1088843944119681026 …

#medhumchat A6 Heard about it afterward, but a patient of ours dying of lung cancer managed to get sworn in as a US citizen in her nursing home bed about 10 days before she died, and the staff from the community center that helped her get there through her a party.

A5 also she calls them the saints. Double meaning there, too. On the one hand, they are the real saints, not us. On the other, "The Saints Go Marching In" gets played at jazz funerals a lot. #medhumchat

Sam smiled, the religious tension broke, the rabbi loved it - it was one of the most healing experiences I can remember having and I wasn't even the man's doctor.

I played my song, "Room for the Soul," about basically what we are all talking about, finding room for the human, divine spark in all the DNA and chemical reactions.

He asked me to take a song, just as the rabbi, also a friend and also a guitar player, walked in to offer this very secular, skeptical man some kosher chicken soup.

#medhumchat A5: Years ago I visited my friend's father in the hospital when he was being treated for CNS lymphoma. It was early on so he was completely "fine" on the outside. Sam Flesher was a musician and always had his guitar nearby; we played together on occasion.

A4 so actually now that I think about experiencing the sound, I understand the "cruelty" of the joy. Suleika hears the sounds of her old music as a taunt to her current self. So she stops listening, and all she can hear is the infernal beeping. #medhumchat

#medhumchat @DrJustinMott @millstej doesn't take cancer to lose that part of self either. Recently heard ep of Hidden Brain about Maya Shankar, who suddenly lost her muse - but ended up as the science person in Obama's White House. Will Suleika find the "window?"

Remember hearing a radio report during the war in Bosnia. It was probably Sylvia Poggioli. After the sirens stopped and the bombs were done falling people went right back to the cafes.

#medhumchat @Ndouthit maybe we adults need to adopt that kid perspective. I think about this after tragic events, when is the right time to laugh again. Same day? "Too soon." But when does "too soon" end? And when the tragedy is ongoing?

#medhumchat @DrJustinMott You're welcome. I feel like digging out the hope from hopelessness is my job. Work with a lot of chronically sad people - and I'm NOT an oncologist or a psychiatrist!

#medhumchat A2: Cruel joy - is it? Taking the long view, all joy we have is a momentary respite before tragedy. Joy is a gift, whenever it comes. Is Make A Wish cruel? The alternative is no joy at all, drowning in suffering the whole damn time.