How Chronic-Disease Patients Are Innovating Together Online - Article by Susannah Fox

[Annette McKinnon]

Interesting article

https://hbr.org/2020/04/how-chronic-disease-patients-are-innovating-together-online

Annette

[Donna Rubenstein]

Thanks for sharing Annette ; what a great illustration of the power of peer connections, support and patient impact. imagine if the health system really got it -how far we could go ....

[Lorraine Bayliss]

I have been a Type 1 Diabetic for close to 50 years. Yes I even worked with Dr. Charles Best. When I was diagnosed there was only a long acting insulin (Beef and Pork) based insulin, which was a foreign substance that the body wanted to destroy, meaning you had to take increasing quantities. I was part of the first group of patients at Women's College Hospital Diabetic Management Centre set up by my doctor, Doctor Anne Kenshole. She brought patients together to talk, dialogue and share experiences while being informed about diabetic management, (foods, carb counting, sick days, diabetes and the law, exercise and effects on BG levels.) Yes Dr. Charles Best worked with us. The people I met in these sessions (over a period of 3 days) have been my friends for life. The support team is amazing. In the last few days I have received many emails from them - one the librarian for TV Ontario, another a landscape artist, another a nurse, a legal aid worker, educators, students at York University etc. The only commonality is we all live with Type 1. One girl who I loved received an award for her graphic art at the Toronto Film Festival and she died all to young. The ornament she made me one Christmas is the first thing to go on my Christmas tree. Another young girl an engineer in her twenties fell into low blood sugars so quickly she passed out before she could grab the glucose tables in the desk drawer where she was sitting. She had a pancreas and kidney transplant and is now free of diabetes and runs her own engineering business. No one understands my life like someone who walks in my shoes. I know this community of friends have been my life line for decades and I love them.