A Less Snarky Solstice
The winter solstice — accompanied by the Mayan non-apocalypse — seems an appropriate time to mark a new beginning, one with less snarkiness.
Readers of my blog, as well as my Facebook friends, may have noticed a certain snarkiness creeping into my posts. The snarkiness is often directed at my clients, borne out of frustration with their habits, protocols, and mistakes. However, this shortest day of the year, combined with recent events, reminds me that life is too short to be in a near-constant snit about things that really don’t matter all that much.
My pettiness was starkly laid out for me on a recent business excursion. An agency client […]
Can clients be clicker-trained?
At first glance this may appear to be another blog about dogs, but it’s actually about clients.
Meet Bodhi (pronounced BO-dee, short for Bodhisattva), the newest member of our family. He’s 9 weeks old, and has been with us for almost 2 weeks. He’s a German shepherd/black Lab/hound mix, and projects to be a big boy. Two months after losing Marcus, we found we couldn’t stand living without a dog. A few weeks, ago, when Susana heard about a litter of puppies, we went to meet them, and fell in love with the little one we decided to call Bodhi. Once he was old enough to leave his Mom […]
What I learned from Marcus
Marcus and I lived under the same roof for only a few months, but he taught me a lifetime’s worth of lessons about life and love.
We said goodbye to Marcus on July 3, the day before Independence Day. He was an old dog, and it was his time to go, but he died happy. And he taught us a lot about living and loving while he was here on this earth, lessons I will never forget.
Before I get into those lessons, I’d like to provide a brief summary of what we know about his life. My girlfriend Susana adopted him […]
What Was That Question Again?
My previous blog post, “The Person Behind the Numbers,” seems to have resonated with a number of readers, several of whom have responded with supportive comments. It seems I am not the only one in this field who occasionally struggles with the challenge of maintaining one’s focus on the patient while writing about data-driven medical topics. Moreover, now that I have dipped my pen into the “remember the patient” inkwell, this issue seems to arise wherever I turn.
As I medical writer I am often called upon to develop questions and answers on a variety of topics. Sometimes these Q&A documents take the form of messaging guides for physicians, […]
The Person Behind the Numbers
A friend posted this image on his Facebook page the other day, and I complied with the request to re-post it on my wall. In my accompanying comment, I noted that although I often write about cancer-related topics, I sometimes get lost in the all the data.
In other words, I need the occasional reminder that there’s always a person behind the numbers. That’s a sobering reminder for anyone, much less a medical writer. On a typical work day, I may find myself writing a press release about an upcoming data presentation at a medical conference, or a newsletter about a […]