Free Web lecture: An e-patient faces glaucoma. Not good. Time to learn.

I’m thrilled to report the third entry in my new blog series “We’re back!”, as the conference speaking business resumes. This one is a Web event – free to the public – hosted by the National Network of Libraries of Medicine. See the Register Now link here.

This will be my first speech ever about the diagnosis I received a year ago this week: glaucoma. It was induced by steroid eye drops prescribed by a different doctor, and believe me when I say, when you find out you might be losing your vision, it changes how you look at things.

Pun intended.

In this speech I’ll describe how when this news hit, I went through the emotional reactions we all do at diagnosis (anger, fear, confusion), and then got to work: “pulled up my big girl pants” and started educating myself. I discovered a world of things I’d never known about eyes – and a boatload of stuff that patients talk about and most doctors don’t.

Most important, and pivotally, after months of hunting I found an excellent online e-patient community. And I’m doing well.

The speech is titled “It gets real: A patient activist faces a nasty diagnosis.” And the eternal lesson is that when trouble hits, a disempowered person says “There’s nothing I can do,” and an empowered person asks, “What can I do about this?” It’s what saved my life in cancer, and as you’ll see, it proves useful in all situations.

Again, register free here, at the Register Now link.

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It’s great to be called back by previous clients.

After two years offline I’ve looked forward to connecting with former clients to update them on how the patient empowerment movement is going. I spoke for NNLM in 2019, just a year before shutdown, when I’d started work on my next book, Superpatients. You can watch that talk if you want: about 45 minutes long plus discussion.

To skip the intro, use this link. (Email subscribers, click the headline to come online and see it.