This Blog

I have made a decision about the direction in which this blog is going. It has to change.

This is the Advocacy for Patients blog. Because I believe that any division of the public and private, the personal and the professional, are artificial divisions, I have shared a lot of personal content on this blog along with lots of information about health care and health reform. Many of you have commented about the more personal posts very favorably, and I appreciate how warmly you've received my own musings about my struggles.

However, this is, in the end, a business. Just because I believe that sharing my experiences as a patient with a chronic illness is helpful to other patients with chronic illnesses does not mean that anybody who visits this blog will understand why I'm bringing personal issues to work with me. And because we are a business, and a business has to make money, what other people think has to matter to me.

And so, at the urging of a very well-established gentleman who was kind enough to take a look at Advocacy for Patients and paint me a picture of some of my realities -- some of which are very hard for me to accept -- I am going to stop treating this blog as my personal journal, and instead focus on the business at hand.

That does not mean that I'll never write anything personal again. I'm sure I will; it's who I am. I love to write, and writing helps me think things through. And really, when you're trying to teach others how to cope with chronic illness, sometimes using yourself as an example is effective. I will always share what I learn about living with chronic illness. But that doesn't mean sharing all of my inner demons.

To those of you who have supported my journaling here, thank you. You have helped me more than you can know. Look for more personal things on my personal Facebook page. Who knows -- maybe I'll end up starting a personal blog. But from here on out, the Advocacy for Patients blog will be the Advocacy for Patients blog, not Jennifer's journal. I hope you understand. Jennifer