Tonight I pulled together all the posts we have on the patient-doctor relationship into one page. Please let me know your reactions. This is a journey I am really grateful to travel with you. Keep on.
Friend to Yourself
A tip every post on being a Friend to Yourself!
Hey Sana. Anything you do is all good! You have so much to teach and we have so much to learn. But the best part I have found of being a teacher is learning from the students. It is a symbyotic relationship, and you so get that!
Col
symbiotic swish swoosh. smile. thx pal.
Your website – blog site? – is great. I’m so impressed with all that you have written – just the volume of it! When I started this journey with you, you were writing every day and I was responding every day. I SO needed the words that you and other responders were offering!! And I SO needed to tell my story!! As you began to write less and less, I panicked for a while because I was sure I couldn’t care for myself without the daily blog sessions I had so quickly gotten attached to. I also began, though, to find that I had learned enough to keep me going between your entries. I was learning to care for myself!!! Thank you for that.
All of that being said, I have been so excited the past few weeks when you have said that you would write every day. I knew I’d be responding every day, too. And then I didn’t. My daughter works at a special needs school for severe and profound needs students from age 3 to 21. The past three weeks we have been spent putting together a prom and setting up graduation exercizes for the five students who graduate this year. Prom and graduation were last night. I have been in a major fibromyalgia flare thoughout the entire three weeks and, therefore, always exhausted and in an amazing amount of pain, but it was worth it. No I didn’t respond to your writing. I didn’t have the time or the enegy. I look forward to reading them next week. But last night, at a prom that cost $2,000 dollars and unimaginable time and effort, all donated by staff, parents and volunteers like my husband and I, with Welcome to Pride Rock being the theme, I heard the DJ announce that, as a member of the Board of Directors of the Hirchhorn Museum in D.C., he was taking photos of the artwork done on the walls for the prom to take to the Museum to see what they could do with them. And I listened to the National Teacher of the Year, who is from our county school system, address the graduates and their families (and the staff and guests) with the message that it is estimated that the average person smiles only five times a day and, if that is true, the graduates were WAY above average and, therefore, taught all of us more than most of us could ever teach. With everyone in tears, we knew that the pain, the exhaustion, the putting aside ourselves for three weeks, was worth more than money or time could ever buy. We knew that we have a reason for just being doing what we did for those kids. And I knew that taking care of myself is more than just thinking of me.
The speaker last night ended her speech by saying that the last thing she always says to her students, and we should say to the graduates, is “I love you and always will, just because you are who you are…and you are way above average just because you are you.” Awesome!!
this was so sweet. thank u nance. we celebrate your story w u as well. keep on.