I woke up this morning and think (so far) I am in a decisive mood. This doesn't always happen. I can waffle with the best of them. I have been doing a lot of that recently - waffling (but not eating waffles). I have been juggling some decisions recently and think I have finally decided its time to make up my mind.
Some decisions are not that big - changing our home owners insurance policy for example. Our old insurance company is just a pain in the neck to deal with so a change is needed.
Other ones will require some work - I really am going to lose weight - and won't happen overnight. I caught a glimpse of my flabby stomach this weekend and decided it really needs to go away. My problem is that there is limit to how much activity I can do before I have to take it easy for a few days to recover.
Still more decisions will require some confrontation - which I really detest - but in this case its needed. I am not ready to talk about that one yet, maybe I will later.
Unappreciation is taking its toll on me and I have to put an end to it. Its one thing to work as a team but another thing when the communication evaporates with no explanation. It makes one feel unwanted. When its chronic, it needs to end. I don't want anyone to think I'm leaving my husband or something because I'm not. He's stuck with me. Its a different issue completely.
I'm also going to clean the car and pick up the living room. Our downstairs bathroom is a construction zone again. The mess generated by construction gives me urges to clean other things up so there is one area I can be proactive. I can accomplish a lot in 30 minutes of dedicated cleaning. Besides cleaning will make me stop thinking about confrontation, and ailments, and flabbiness. But I can still be decisive.
After rereading this post, I decided I am being vague inmy decisiveness but that is what you get today.
Showing posts with label decisions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label decisions. Show all posts
The Cancer Decisions
Back in the dark ages of medicine in the 1980s and earlier or so, doctors were gods. They gave us a diagnosis. Told us what our treatment was going to be. We didn't have to make any decisions as our doctors told us what would happen.
Now in 2012, our doctors tell us our options and we make informed decisions based on the advice we have received. That way our wishes are included in the treatment plan...
Wait just a minute here, we have to make informed decisions which means we must do work and figure out what we want? What happened to the easy days of the past where we got to sit around as the patient and be cured without any work?
How are we supposed to make these decisions? What if one of our decisions turned out to have as good an outcome as we wanted? Now our stress level goes up! What to do? What if I was wrong? What if I didn't understand fully all the possible outcomes? Oh, no........
A person with a cancer diagnosis is given treatment options and needs to make decisions which could determine their life span, based on what their doctor tells them and they learn elsewhere. It becomes highly stressful. Should I do chemo, then surgery and then radiation? Or should I opt for radiation followed by surgery? Or should I skip chemo and go straight to radiation? There are too many decisions!
This happens all the time. I see it on message boards everywhere.Also, a doctor has blogged about it on Cancer Realities at WebMD.
Doctors are now encouraged to involve patient wishes in their advice. Patients are becoming more and more informed. But these decisions can be very difficult to make. A patient can be faced with regrets and fears - "what if I made the wrong decision and it comes back and kills me?" This is an added pressure.
Where I am treated, after my breast cancer diagnosis in 2007, I had a day where I met with the surgeon, medical oncologist, the radiation oncologist, and a social worker. At the end of the day, they came to me with a treatment plan and an explanation of the options they had considered. They wanted my opinion - what I was stressed, shocked, scared, and more - was I comfortable with their recommendations? I actually felt relatively calm about it as they presented a group recommendaiton to me.
This is a far cry from my thyroid cancer diagnosis in 1981, the technology wasn't there to help determine whether the lump they felt was cancerous or not. They just told me they were removing it so they could see if it was cancer or not but they really felt because of my age and thyroid cancer's then rarity that it was probably just a goiter.... There was some comfort in being told what to do as opposed to making any decisions.
Do I like making the decisions in my treatment? Yes. But some are definitely easier on my brain than others.
Now in 2012, our doctors tell us our options and we make informed decisions based on the advice we have received. That way our wishes are included in the treatment plan...
Wait just a minute here, we have to make informed decisions which means we must do work and figure out what we want? What happened to the easy days of the past where we got to sit around as the patient and be cured without any work?
How are we supposed to make these decisions? What if one of our decisions turned out to have as good an outcome as we wanted? Now our stress level goes up! What to do? What if I was wrong? What if I didn't understand fully all the possible outcomes? Oh, no........
A person with a cancer diagnosis is given treatment options and needs to make decisions which could determine their life span, based on what their doctor tells them and they learn elsewhere. It becomes highly stressful. Should I do chemo, then surgery and then radiation? Or should I opt for radiation followed by surgery? Or should I skip chemo and go straight to radiation? There are too many decisions!
This happens all the time. I see it on message boards everywhere.Also, a doctor has blogged about it on Cancer Realities at WebMD.
Doctors are now encouraged to involve patient wishes in their advice. Patients are becoming more and more informed. But these decisions can be very difficult to make. A patient can be faced with regrets and fears - "what if I made the wrong decision and it comes back and kills me?" This is an added pressure.
Where I am treated, after my breast cancer diagnosis in 2007, I had a day where I met with the surgeon, medical oncologist, the radiation oncologist, and a social worker. At the end of the day, they came to me with a treatment plan and an explanation of the options they had considered. They wanted my opinion - what I was stressed, shocked, scared, and more - was I comfortable with their recommendations? I actually felt relatively calm about it as they presented a group recommendaiton to me.
This is a far cry from my thyroid cancer diagnosis in 1981, the technology wasn't there to help determine whether the lump they felt was cancerous or not. They just told me they were removing it so they could see if it was cancer or not but they really felt because of my age and thyroid cancer's then rarity that it was probably just a goiter.... There was some comfort in being told what to do as opposed to making any decisions.
Do I like making the decisions in my treatment? Yes. But some are definitely easier on my brain than others.
Hospital advertising
I have wondered why hospitals seem to spend more and more on advertising. Radio, tv, bill boards - they seem to be increasing more and more. I haven't figured this out until light dawned on me - some marketing person or advertising executive convinced them they needed to advertise.
Let's take a poll here - who chooses their medical care based on a billboard or tv ad? One vote here for no. I put a little bit more research into it than that. I might ask my doctor, ask friends and family, consider how long the drive would be (because of my inherent laziness), and maybe even go look at their websites.
This morning while watching the news, an ad came on for some hospital explaining breast tomography and how good it was at detecting tumors. So therefore you should go there for breast tomography. But they forgot the important point of why tomography - is it instead of mammograms? Or if you have a 'bad' mammogram? It didn't entice me to go there at all.
The news was just interrupted by a commercial advertising another hospital's cancer center. Every hospital seems to be advertising their cancer center more and more. Why, do they expect us all to be diagnosed and come running to them for treatment because we saw them on TV or on a billboard? Cancer center's seem to be the latest fad in hospital advertising. Everyone is getting one. So it becomes an unending game of one-upmanship.
I am a marketing person so I understand there can be many purposes to advertising - image enhancement or promotion for a sale or event. If they are focusing on enhancing their image, I'm not sure that tv ads are a good way to spend the money. TV ads are expensive to start - you need a budget that is a upper five figures to start. Maybe they could spend some of that money on patient care instead of advertising.
Let's take a poll here - who chooses their medical care based on a billboard or tv ad? One vote here for no. I put a little bit more research into it than that. I might ask my doctor, ask friends and family, consider how long the drive would be (because of my inherent laziness), and maybe even go look at their websites.
This morning while watching the news, an ad came on for some hospital explaining breast tomography and how good it was at detecting tumors. So therefore you should go there for breast tomography. But they forgot the important point of why tomography - is it instead of mammograms? Or if you have a 'bad' mammogram? It didn't entice me to go there at all.
The news was just interrupted by a commercial advertising another hospital's cancer center. Every hospital seems to be advertising their cancer center more and more. Why, do they expect us all to be diagnosed and come running to them for treatment because we saw them on TV or on a billboard? Cancer center's seem to be the latest fad in hospital advertising. Everyone is getting one. So it becomes an unending game of one-upmanship.
I am a marketing person so I understand there can be many purposes to advertising - image enhancement or promotion for a sale or event. If they are focusing on enhancing their image, I'm not sure that tv ads are a good way to spend the money. TV ads are expensive to start - you need a budget that is a upper five figures to start. Maybe they could spend some of that money on patient care instead of advertising.
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