The Journal
Not a chronological pile of unrelated posts. Articles connect to patients, caregivers, professionals, the book, medical definitions, and resources.
Researching is not the same as rendering a verdict. Bringing literature to your medical team as a question — not a demand — is one of the clearest expressions of the Waded In Together model. Here is what changed when I stopped trying to manage the river alone.
“The river continues to move whether a person is prepared or not.”
— from The River Does Not Ask
Explore the bookThe physician I came to call the Healer never surrendered his medical authority — he invited me to do my part. Continuity, honest expectations, and a willingness to teach rather than merely direct built a partnership that changed how I understood care.
Waiting for a transplant is dependence on a system, a family, and a stranger's generosity. It is also the knowledge that one family's hope is inseparable from another's loss — a story that demands ethical humility, not triumph.
In a hallway in Las Vegas I knew something was wrong but could not make myself understood. Stroke awareness begins with preparation: medical identification, a current history, and a plan for the moments when you cannot speak for yourself.
Illness travels with you. Halfway around the world, with an implanted device and a complicated history, the question became how to reach help abroad and how to live fully without pretending the river was calm.
An implanted device can mean protection and fear at the same time. The record shows the shock; the person feels something the numbers never capture. Helping families understand that difference matters as much as the technology.
Serious illness does not always arrive in a hospital. It can interrupt work, travel, and the identity a person is trying to preserve.
Suffering can remain long after the event that caused it — a truth shared with veterans and families living with dementia, without claiming every form of trauma is identical.
People notice, feed, drive, lift, accompany, and remain. Love is something we do — and most of it happens far from the examination room.
When I brought literature on immunosuppression and cancer risk to my team, it was not a demand. It was a second question. Evidence and trust together decided the answer.
A short, printable set of questions that help a patient walk into the room prepared — without trying to become the clinician.