Awesome article

On Treatment
Written By Liz Salmi

Real Funny People: Young Patients Laugh at Cancer
July 29, 2009

"...I started receiving books, stacks of self-help volumes from well-meaning people. Books claiming that cancer was hate materialized in the body of people who don't love enough. Books promising you can cure cancer by drinking wheat-grass juice. It made me want to throw up, even before my chemotherapy regimen started and I became a vomiting expert. I didn't need more things to make me feel guilty and excluded. I already felt like an outsider. I was by far the youngest patient in the oncology ward. I was too cynical to believe herbal remedies were going to cure me but unwilling to venture onto medical Web sites, where the depressing prognosis stats were lurking, ready to scare the hell out of me."
-- Iva Skotch

Liz Salmi

Liz Salmi is Communications & Patient Initiatives Director for OpenNotes at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Over the last 15 years Liz has been: a research subject; an advisor in patient stakeholder groups; a leader in “patient engagement” research initiatives; and an innovator, educator and investigator in national educational and research projects. Today her work focuses on involving patients and care partners in the co-design of research and research dissemination. It is rumored Liz was the drummer in a punk rock band.

https://thelizarmy.com
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