This is a guest post from Christine Kraft, Twitter friend @ChristineKraft. She’s a pensive, musey blogger at CocoVillage, and “wicked smaht,” as we say in Boston. She’s also the one who introduced us to Regina Holliday last year.

She recognizes talent when she sees it – and here, she plays the role of patient as ingenue, imploring the care team to take the leash off her potential.
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An appeal for Participatory Medicine,
inspired by Diva e-Patient friends and colleagues:

Dear Wonderful Doctor and Care Team,

I am writing to suggest that you cast me in the most important performance of my life: My Health Care Crisis.

I realize you hardly know me and that you can’t really stop to get to know me at this point because there is a long line of folks just like me waiting for your services… But since we’re suddenly on a kind of “Fast Track” to get to know my body (given last week’s diagnosis), I was hoping that you’d at least consider giving me a supporting role in my upcoming treatment.

I’ll play it straight; no Femme Fatal, Gypsy Rose Lee, or Little Lost Soul. Nope, I’ll go for a completely modern (dare I say, “sexy”) evolving archetype, The Empowered Patient.

I am sure you have questions. And yes, I am a rookie. I cannot predict with the exactness of a doctor like you the outcome of my involvement in my care. But acknowledging that I have a role would be a powerful component in the show. And this is a kind of show, Doctor, isn’t it?

What do you say? Can you accept a wee bit of showmanship from the patient side while you miraculously cut that large tumor out of my endometrial liner and administer powerful technology reserved for only the most specially trained among us? This *is* high drama but I promise I won’t be too saccharine or too melancholy. I’ll take the pain meds as directed and open up to the fear as best as I can.

Doctor, if I haven’t made it precisely, exactly, clear to you yet, I think we make a great team. You’ve gotta let me show you what I’ve got.

Sincerely,
Your Patient

Originally posted on her blog, 1/8/2010.