The Patient's Role in Their Own Healthcare

You are the world's foremost expert at living in your body. No one is a bigger expert on who you are and how you feel than you. Your Mission, should you choose to accept it, is to take responsibility for your own healthcare. Discover how to develop a more collaborative relationship with our providers, and provide them with the right information, so they can make the right diagnosis and help us create the right treatment plan for our specific challenges… and then follow through on what we decide we need to do.

Key Points

• Our providers' jobs are the easy 2%—telling us what needs to be done.
• Our job as the patient is the really hard 98%—actually doing the things it takes to feel our best.
• You have 100% control over how you are actively participating in a mental and emotional way, and how you are receiving what your providers have to offer.
• Use data to give a balanced, true picture of how we are doing when we are talking with our providers. If I say "I can't stand very long," that is very different than: "I can only stand for 5 minutes," or "I can only stand for an hour."
• You are the one living inside your body. You are the one who has to take care of it.
• How do you go about doing that really hard 98% of following through?

Links & Resources

• FibromyalgiaPodcast.com is the digital companion to this audio magazine, where you can find full show notes, submit your questions for Tami Stackelhouse, and schedule a free consultation with a fibromyalgia coach.
• Get a free copy of Tami's book, Take Back Your Life: Find Hope and Freedom From Fibromyalgia Symptoms and Pain at FibromyalgiaPodcast.com.
• Tracking tools mentioned in this episode are available here