Last week, I was given the privilege of speaking at UK's Internal Medicine Clinical Pathologic Conference for Grand Rounds. Six times a year, the IM team selects a case to present and mine was picked for the April 2, 2010 edition. My doc asked me if I would participate so that the physicians and residents would have the opportunity to hear the patient's perspective on a difficult and prolonged disease diagnosis. She asked me to talk about my symptoms, fears, frustrations, pain, etc through the whole process this past summer. I was scared to death to talk in front of all these smart people (ha!), but I agreed to do it. They have never had a patient speak at conference before, so I was honored to have been asked!
The audience seemed pretty captivated, but they were a tough crowd. I tried to crack a few jokes to lighten my spirits, but like, no one even chuckled. What is wrong with these people?! I guess I'm just more easily amused than most. Christopher told me he heard people laugh and that I just couldn't hear them because they were all sitting in the back of the auditorium. It's possible... but, eh... I don't know. In any event, it stressed me out when they didn't audibly laugh- it made me that much more nervous.
Anyway, I did pretty well through the whole thing until my last five minutes when I tried to give my compliments to the Internal Medicine team. I started crying when I told them I received excellent care. The Chair of the IM department spoke up and helped me out while I was trying to pull myself together. He said I had a lot of courage to come speak at this event. One of my doctors gave me a hug after the presentation- it was so sweet. My PCP (who is an IM doc and the one who invited me to speak) clapped real big for me and said I did wonderfully. Oh, hurray! What a relief.
It was a really neat presentation. The residency program director told me it was the best one all year. How cool. I really enjoyed listening to my pulmonologist's part of the talk about how they diagnosed me and the tedious process they went through to get there. Fascinating.
Fun fact of information: Less than 0.5% of IBD patients develop a true pulmonary manifestation of the disease. Of that 0.5% of people, more than 90% of them have Ulcerative Colitis... the other 10% or so have Crohn's. I am a rare bird.
My loving supportive husband attended the presentation of course, and my daddy also flew up with his flying buddy, Joe. It was so nice to have a personal fan club there. We all went to lunch after it was over.
Anyway, I'm glad that's over with. :)
