This is an updated clone of this 2014 post.
It is a time of celebration!
Since creating this domain seven years ago today (2009!) I’ve done:
242323 speeches3652 panels3038 policy meetings6886 participant in other events
… that’s 499 events so far, totaling about 150,000 people, in …- 213 cities, in
1820 countries, logging …- … around 830,000 air miles
and authored or co-authored:
- 1099 blog posts:
304433 posts here (including this one)78 posts on my Forbes blog (no longer active)472654 on e-patients.net (and 106 more on that site, before this site’s “birthday”)- 4 on the BMJ blog
- Three books: Laugh, Sing and Eat Like a Pig; Facing Death – With Hope; and Let Patients Help: A Patient Engagement Handbook (with Dr. Danny Sands)
- Fifteen articles and papers (BMJ (twice), Journal of Clinical Oncology (first author), iHealthbeat, SGIM Forum (twice), Aspen Institute booklet, Patient Safety & Quality Healthcare (twice, incl a cover story), ACM Interactions, PLAID diabetes journal (cover story), four more)
and acquired on social media:
21,40031,171 more Twitter followers2,0002,698 Facebook friends- 500+ LinkedIn connections (they won’t seem to say more than that!)
- Klout impact score of 79-80
- … while spending $0 on traditional advertising.
Also 150 221 media mentions, and 17 mentions in other people’s books.
I couldn’t have done it without you people paying attention and spreading the word. Thank you!
And, looking forward…
Last time I said “stay tuned for tomorrow’s post on what’s next in life.” That next post was “Six month countdown to Medicare! What do I need to know?” This time, the next post will be about a total makeover coming for this website. See ya Monday or Tuesday!
Congratulations, Dave! And thank you for all the hard work!
7 years… Maybe it’s the best time to test Andaman7? Maybe there’s a reason for that number 7? :-).
See http://bit.ly/a7vkblogen
Thank you
Vincent Keunen
Belgium
Amazing! Congratulations, Dave! And many more to come!
I’ve watched and cheered as you led a generation to understand the importance and value of ongoing advocacy. An entire community is smarter, wiser, and more strategic thanks to your efforts. Some, thanks to your efforts, have even embraced proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling! Always your fan…
Blush.
I’ve learned a lot from you in seven years. Hoping to keep learning for 7 more….and beyond. Than you from me and my family with whom I’ve shared your thoughts. Dave
Congratulations.
Can you tell us what we can do to move our state politicians to getting off their collective keisters and getting legislation that helps us the patient?
Congrats, Dave. I just walked into NIH and made myself available for immunotherapy studies – my new role as a lab rat if chemo proves inadequate to the job. Came home with one possible study but homework reading one journal paper indicates that particular study’s not optimal while another at nearby Dana Farber may be better. So that makes two I know about. More to come, I hope.
They might be contingency plans, but from your experience with using the immune system in “earlier days”, there is a better knock-out punch delivered than in using chemo for advanced and aggressive disease. Of course, as a lab rat, it is all about other metrics than cures (though I can creatively misunderstand the agenda whereby I risk my fragile life).
Dave, you are an inspiration. Your energy and purpose is non-stop. I passed on your book title “Laugh, Sing Eat Like a Pig” to a man whose brother was just diagnosed with kidney cancer. Hope it helps his outlook! It helped bring some cheer to me with a much different diagnosis of what people used to call “The Big C” before doctors and adventurous patients started cutting it down to size.
Wow, Dianne, it’s so amazing to hear things like this. The internet is such a vast space – when we drop a pebble into it, we have no idea what implications that will have somewhere in the future. So grateful to you for posting this. Truly humbling and happying.
Re-posting from Richard Weissberg on the 5-year post, so we don’t lose it –
Re Barbara’s book, yes, you do recall correctly. The website is http://www.InSicknessAsInHealth.com . She spoke at Stanford last week (with a capacity crowd :-), and it went great. I’ll send you a link to the video when it’s available.
Re when you were sick, I remember the sad times like they were yesterday. I can’t describe how happy what you did (i.e. saving your life) made me :-)
________
And he just added the video of the lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAgASg1yRKg
and a two-minute excerpt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EyiUFgH970