Patient Support Quotes

I was destined to work with dying patients. I had no choice when I encountered my first AIDS patient. I felt called to travel some 250,000 miles each year to hold workshops that helped people cope with the most painful aspects of life, death and the transition between the two.

Find a doctor who cares about you, because a big part of health care is caring.

Having deinstitutionalized mental health, we have not created the structure and the institutions to take care of people, to identify when there is a mental health problem, and to get the treatment to people.

On April 2, the nurses started my first round of five intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) infusions. The clear IV bags hung on a metal pole above my head, their liquid trickling down into my vein. Each of those ordinary-looking bags contained the healthy antibodies of over a thousand blood donors and cost upwards of $20,000 per infusion. One thousand tourniquets, one thousand nurses, one thousand veins, one thousand blood-sugar regulating cookies, all just to help one patient.

However, most of my part, I play a pediatrician, and most of my role had to do with being in another place, staying at the hospital and trying to save kids and stay until people could come. So, it was more based on reality.

When you work in the pharmaceutical industry you realize that there's a lot out of people's control, and there's ways that people can be helped.

The nurses, I have already learned, are the ones who give us the answers we’re desperate for. Unlike the doctors, who fidget like they need to be somewhere else, the nurses patiently answer us as if we are the first set of parents to ever have this kind of meeting with them, instead of the thousandth.

Every cent that goes to research is changing the lives of patients and their families right now.

I came upon a doctor who appeared in quite poor health. I said, 'There's nothing that I can do for you that you can't do for yourself.' He said, 'Oh yes you can. Just hold my hand. I think that that would help.' So I sat with him a while then I asked him how he felt. He said, 'I think I'm cured.'

Always thank your nurse. Sometimes they're the only one between you and a hearse.

In a majority of hospitals, in a majority of places, it is the nurses that are on the frontlines. They're the ones working every moment with the patients to ensure that they do well.

I really do think how we frame things determines so much of our experience, and I've been talking to a lot of oncologists, like, why don't we call them transformation suites and give people transformation juice and have guides that support people when they're going through chemo so you could actually burn away what needs to be burned away, as opposed to this dread, terror, horror, which is a very different experience.

We are all healers who can reach out and offer health, and we are all patients in constant need of help.

While there is no cure, cystic fibrosis is so close to being a livable disease. There is a lot of hope.

People with AIDS, cancer and other illnesses need free nonmedical support services.

Never deny a diagnosis, but do deny the negative verdict that may go with it.

I have a platform to be able to do something to help other people beat cancer.

My job as a surgeon is not just to fix a joint, but to give my patients the encouragement and tools they need to speed up their recovery and leave my clinic better than they have been in years.

The vast majority of people who speak to me say they have had brilliant care. When they are critical, their concern tends not to be directed at the medical side but the ancillary things that surround it, such as helping patients to eat meals, cleanliness, and making sure that when patients have a problem, they are listened to.

There's such a void in the medical system. When my husband was sick, it became very apparent to me that the nurses were doing the doctor's job, and the doctors were doing the disease job, so no one was caring for the patient and the loved one.

I am very excited to accept the role of Honorary Patron with Hope Air because of the national scope of the organization and the very real impact they have on Canadians who need to travel to healthcare.

The only reason I ever shared my health journey with the world was because I felt it to be my duty to sufferers that are bed-ridden and dying because there has yet to be found a proper diagnostic test for Lyme Disease in this country.

By visiting patients in their home, by helping them come to terms with their illness, I could heal when I could not cure.

I had two primary cancers, which was pretty unusual. And when I got the second one, people told me such terrible bad-news stories, they instigated fears that weren't there in the first place. I do remember with such gratitude one doctor saying to me, 'Two primaries? That's nothing. I've seen a patient with six.'

I don't know anyone who enjoys going to the hospital. To help remedy this, I got an idea to create what a Laugh Room in the pediatric ward of hospitals.