@S4PM Thanks to @ePatientDave and @WheezyNurse for helping me send a message, which I want to share here, too:
#S4PM2019
#S4PM2019
@S4PM @ePatientDave @WheezyNurse I'm honored by this award and humbled to reflect on the principles that I try to share with the world in my work. Here's a story that I love to tell because it captures one of the key principles: To exist in possibility. #S4PM2019
@S4PM @ePatientDave @WheezyNurse When Tom Ferguson was quite ill — “bald as a cue ball” from chemo, as he put it — he came to DC to visit. #S4PM2019
@S4PM @ePatientDave @WheezyNurse I don’t remember the details, but there had been some setback in the e-patient movement, some cutting remark by a prominent doubter, some news article that had got it all wrong. #S4PM2019
@S4PM @ePatientDave @WheezyNurse I asked Tom how he was able to maintain his sunny optimism. He was smiling, even as he was a decade into cancer treatment and four decades into the fight for patient empowerment. #S4PM2019
@S4PM @ePatientDave @WheezyNurse I believe that some of his optimism was genetic — a pioneer, entrepreneurial spirit — but his answer took no personal credit. He talked about his Zen practice, his focus on gratitude and to “be here now.” To be in the moment, at all times, is to exist in possibility. #S4PM2019
@S4PM @ePatientDave @WheezyNurse My interpretation is that “be here now” contains the possibility that your reality, your fight, your struggle, your triumph, is one that can animate the world. #S4PM2019
@S4PM @ePatientDave @WheezyNurse To me, that's what @S4PM is about: an optimistic and fierce force for good, always based in reality because that's where patients and caregivers must live. We all can be the change we want to see in the world. #S4PM2019
