On Bruce Dan

I spent several hours today catching up on Bruce Dan’s blog: http://brucedan.wordpress.com/. Doctor Dan, if you don’t know of him, is a real-life renaissance man: a medical doctor and a journalist who’s also dabbled in engineering before going to work for the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service.

When I was but a PR pup, I used to pitch Bruce when he was the medical editor at WLS in Chicago. Much later, he was a consultant to my health care practice at Porter Novelli, where I spent most of my career.

Bruce is being treated for a fairly potent form of leukemia and his blog is his classroom, teaching friends, acquaintances, anyone who is interested about the mundane, the horrible and the ridiculousness of a serious illness, from the viewpoint of a physician and a skilled writer. A virtual who’s who in the pantheon of medical journalism weighs in, rooting for Bruce.

Thanks to Bruce, I learned that most people don’t wash their right thumb (or left, if you are left-handed), vastly diminishing the prophylactic powers of soap. Okay, that was kind of funny. But not so funny is the mental, emotional and constitutional mine field people with serious illnesses traverse day in and day out. It is harrowing for someone such as Bruce who has the intelligence and financial resources to cope. So many people, however, are far less fortunate. His observations about this are invaluable if we really care about health care in the U.S.A.

I’ll continue to read his blog—it’s so much more than mine. And wish him all the best for the future.