Translating Lived Experience Into Clinical Insight.
A dog with a bone.
The past few weeks have been tough.
I have had to really think, strategise, and pull apart and put back together again.
I am trying to do the right thing by myself and just as importantly the right thing by you.
I read things on certain platforms about food, eating, what’s important and where money is being spent (for those in Australia the NDIS Government cuts are an issue and this is not the forum, but I watch with interest).
On Monday 30 June is going live with a podcast that features Mark K (not sure you want to be singled out Mark) and yours truly.
I’ll share the link when it is live in a few days time. I mention it because I recall when responding to Stacy about some questions on food, eating and life now, I remember the feeling I had.
That feeling when your heart races, your words start to match the deepest emotion on the topic and you just know you are passionate and driven to talk, act and provide.
This brings me to the ‘tough’ weeks.
For some reason I can’t let this go.
It would be a whole lot easier if I went away and became a grey haired nomad with a kelpie. This relentless goal of mine to teach those in our care orbit about the nuances of food during and after treatment.
The reality of what happens when you get home.
I was not as driven to do MasterChef (Australia) even though asked. Just as well in hindsight as my relentless sore throat turned out to be the life changing other option of stage 4 oropharyngeal cancer.
It was just recently that I recognised a very important point, a fact I’d over looked and that is that radiated induced dysphagia has its own wardrobe of sports jackets.
It has its own weirdness (that’s my technical medical term) that is, if you didn’t have the radiotherapy you likely don’t suffer the weirdness. Or do you? It’s an interesting point and I’d be glad of any feedback.
But in my research of best resource offering for clinicians I discover that globally there are a lot of us experiencing the ‘weirdness’ and the care givers, family, friends and lovers of those experiencing the weirdness is vast.
I am here for you and that drives me, it is the one thing I know for certain I can eloquently discuss and offer solutions - or at the very best, alternatives to the deafening silence I encountered when I went through the treatment.
I have become a specialist trainer meets advocate meets curriculum developer.
If you haven’t already you can see some of the subtle changes on my website here, specifically scroll down to the Food Reintegration Assessment section, where I talk about working with radiated dysphagia patients. Admittedly this is aimed squarely at clinicians but equally could be applied to care givers and individuals.
I am not all things to all people but the aforementioned dissection refers to the greatest impact for the food sufferers globally.
You will know that I have opened the doors to one on one training and these activities will start to form the focus of my work going forward.
Now more than ever as we hit the half way mark of the year 2025 - is a timely reminder that life is short and time is our most precious commodity.
We owe it to ourselves to ensure we are eating and enjoying our best food life.
I will let you know the podcast link when it’s live, in the meantime sign up to
it’s an excellent read.Enjoy your weekend and as always …
Eat Well.