Entries by Marie Ennis-O'Connor

Mind the Gap: How to Handle a Cancer-Related Absence in Your Work History

Are you looking for a new job after cancer treatment? Perhaps you left your last employment after your diagnosis, or maybe you are still in your current job but want […]

What Is One Thing (Or More) You’d Like to Say to a Newly Diagnosed Breast Cancer Patient?

As we enter the final days of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I am remembering a time over a decade ago, when immersed in a sea of pink ribbons I felt […]

Ten Things You Should Never Say To A Person With Cancer…And One Thing You Should

I get it. People so often just don’t know what to say to someone with cancer. It’s a shock when someone you care about has received a life-changing diagnosis. Our […]

12 Best Practice Tips To Design Helpful Patient Information Materials

As a patient advocate, you may be asked to help review or co-design patient information materials. Or you may wish to create the information yourself because you’ve noticed a gap […]

Patient Advocacy: 7 Ways To Access Medical Journal Articles For Free

Has this ever happened to you? You come across a tweet with a link to a new study in your disease area and you eagerly click on it only to […]

These Gift Ideas For Newly Diagnosed Cancer Patients Will Show How Much You Care

Do you have a friend or family member who is newly diagnosed with cancer? Chances are you’d like to get them a gift to show you’re thinking of them. While […]

What Do You Do When Your Doctor Tells You Not To Google?

What do you do when your doctor tells you not to Google?  A recent Twitter conversation prompted this question, so I set out to answer it with the help of […]

Patient Advocacy: Ten Tips For Twitter Success

I love Twitter. It’s one of my favorite places on the Internet, and one of the few sites I visit more than once a day. I’ve been a Twitter user […]

Patient Advocacy: 21 Tools To Help You Achieve More With Social Media

Recently I had the pleasure of taking part in an Ask Me Anything #patientchat about social media. I had forgotten how fast-paced a Twitter chat can be and given that […]

Nourishing Your Body and Mind: Nutritional Advice For Cancer Survivors

There are few things more confusing to those of us who have had a cancer diagnosis than dietary advice. From conflicting recommendations from well-meaning friends to advice in magazine articles […]

Breast Cancer Awareness Month and Its Many Shades of Pink (and Blue)

We are more than half-way through Breast Cancer Awareness Month (BCAM) – impossible to miss given the pink ribbon avalanche that arrives each Fall. While there is no denying that […]

Patient Empowerment Revisited: Part 2

Welcome back to the second part of this discussion on patient empowerment. In Part 1 we looked at self-advocacy and the importance of having access to information which allows us […]

Patient Empowerment Revisited: What Does It Truly Mean To Patients?

Language is constantly evolving in our everyday lives. This is also true of the language we use to describe patienthood. The words we use color how we view our world […]

Quotation Inspiration: 10 Quotes to Inspire, Motivate and Uplift Cancer Patients

This month, I thought we could all do with a little quotation inspiration. When you’re dealing with cancer, some inspiring words can be just the thing to give you a […]

Music as Medicine: The Healing Power of Music

The late neurologist, Oliver Sacks in his book “Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain,” argued that music is essential to being human in ways that we’ve only begun to […]