I’m Eva Minkoff - a chronic illness warrior, #Spoonie, person with a chronic illness – whatever you wanna call me, and I have fibromyalgia and hypermobility syndrome (possibly EDS, but still figuring that one out).
I have been passionate about health since a young age and I have dabbled in the professional world of health for over a decade with degrees in neuropsychology, nutrition science and working in clinical, laboratory, corporate and startup healthcare.
At the same time, for the past 20 years I have been living with chronic illness, and for the first 10 of those 20 years, I went undiagnosed. I was confused and in pain with no answers for 10 years all while being called a hypochondriac and bouncing around from doctor to doctor around Manhattan. At the time I had also been professionally training as a ballet dancer and therefore was deemed a drama queen without the recognition that my love for ballet may actually have been leading me to suffer physically, mentally and emotionally. Once I was finally diagnosed the search for the right support was still a huge struggle and I found that at the foundation of my struggle to find the right diagnoses and the right care had one big, fundamental issue in common: HUMAN connection.
We often don’t give enough credit to the influence of the relationship between a doctor and a patient in terms of proper care including diagnosis, treatment and outcomes. There is more than enough research out there that without a doubt demonstrates the impact of a positive vs a negative doctor-patient relationship. These interactions (short or long term) have the ability to shape our overall health as patients but also the quality of life of the health professionals on the other end.
In this podcast, I aim to lift the veil over the blinded eyes of healthcare from both sides. Patients are people. Practitioners are people. As people we have our humanity in common and it’s time that we started treating our interactions as those with humanity in common.
As a quick disclaimer, I love doctors. Not all, but in general, I have enormous respect for them. I wanted to be a doctor, I have many friends who are doctors, hell I even ended up marrying a doctor! So its important to note that I don’t choose sides. Like I said, we’re all people with humanity in common, which means that our default is to live in our own worlds and sometimes that leads to making mistakes.
The conversations in this podcast are meant to challenge the status quo of ALL relationships related to our healthcare journey. The Relationships with our healthcare providers, the relationships with our friends and family, the relationships with our colleagues, and in my mind most importantly, the relationships we have with ourselves along our health journey.
In fact, in every episode we touch upon the relationship to ourselves – if not focus on it fully – because that is a non-negotiable relationship. In my opinion, understanding yourself as human and being compassionate to yourself as human is the best thing you could ever do for your health.
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