All posts by erin

What I’m Reading: The Radium Girls

My favorite types of books are nonfiction, specifically the history of science. It’s the nature of science that so many discoveries and innovations throughout history shaped not only the eras in which they originated, but continue to shape the society of their futures. I also find it so compelling to discover the story of someone who lived and died, contributing to a scientific advance that has had an impact on us all, but whose name has been outlived by their deeds. With this in mind, it is probably not surprising that The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore fits squarely into my literary comfort zone, and that I loved it.

Starting right after World War I, The Radium Girls chronicles the rise of radium as a wonder element, incorporated into untold numbers of beauty and household products, as well as used industrially for its ability to glow in the dark. This was an era in which a glow-in-the-dark wrist watch was an extremely sought-after item, and companies like the United States Radium Corporation and the Radium Dial Company sprung up to cash in on the radium craze.

My copy of The Radium Girls. Photo by Erin Podolak.

My copy of The Radium Girls. Photo by Erin Podolak.

Hundreds of young women, some barely into their teens, came to work at these companies because they offered well-paying jobs at a time when families were struggling. Young women who could work would do so to help support their families in the years before they established families of their own or to provide themselves with spending money. At the time, while some scientists were just discovering that radium could be extremely dangerous, the public image of the substance was that it was beneficial and couldn’t possibly be harmful.

A well-paying job with other young women in a joyful and convivial atmosphere, working with a healthful wonder substance that had the added bonus of making your clothes and hair glow-in-the-dark? It was an opportunity few women could pass up. So women flocked to the factories, spending every day sitting in a studio painting watch dials with luminescent radium paint. To paint the small numbers on the dials, the women used a technique called “lip pointing” –twirling their paint brush in their mouth between highlighting each number to make a fine point, ingesting traces of the radium paint each time they did so.

Within a few years, the “dream job” bubble would burst as women started suffering from mystery illnesses: tooth decay, mouth sores that wouldn’t heal, pain in their feet, their backs, their hips, low blood cell counts, sarcomas, and even bones that simply crumbled at the touch. Ultimately, scores of women would die of these illnesses, many long before the women and their doctors were able to figure out that it was exposure to the radium that was harming them.

Radium was still new enough that its negative effects were poorly understood, and  illnesses like the dial-painters had never been seen before. Companies profiting from radium and the girls’ work had every interest in preserving radium’s healthful image and their own finances. The companies would go to excessive lengths to avoid taking responsibility for any of the women harmed by the radium in their studios. Moore’s book tells the story of these women, as they struggled to make sense of what could have harmed them, never dreaming it could be their employers. She notes their dramatic turns from victims to advocates as they discovered their own poisoning, fighting until the end to make sure that the companies were forced to do the right thing for their workers.

One of the things about the Radium Girls that I loved was the connection to the women that Moore clearly feels. She cares about their stories, protecting them, preserving them, and telling it right. Moore writes beautifully, with sentences that lingered in my mind, hammering home the point that she is trying to make. For example, Moore describes the exhumation of a radium worker years after her death, while seeking evidence to bolster the evidence that radium could kill:

“When they checked the x-ray film, days later, there was Mollie’s message from beyond the grave. She had been trying to speak for so long-now, at last, there was someone listening. Her bones made white pictures on the ebony film. Her vertebrae glowed in the vertical white lights, like a regiment of matches slowing burning into black. They looked like rows of shining dial painters walking home from work. The pictures of her skull, meanwhile, with her jawbone missing, make her mouth stretch unnaturally wide, as though she was screaming-screaming for justice through all these years.” The Radium Girls, page 194.

It’s a passage that I read and re-read, and I think it showcases how Moore writes. It is captivating and hard-hitting, playing up the facts and their resonance at the same time.

The book shines a light on the misdeeds at the dial painting plants in Newark and Orange, New Jersey and in Ottowa, Illinois. Having grown up in New Jersey, the story of the dial painters struck a chord with me. But the plight of the women in these cities is a story that is altogether engaging and compelling. At the time, radium sickness wasn’t even defined, but the women fought to make their illnesses recognized by the government. They went on to challenge the companies, even forcing changes to worker’s compensation rules, and saving countless lives by exposing radium for the dangerous substance we all now know it to be.

The amount of deceit on the part of the companies made my blood boil with the injustice of it all. I think being a young woman, I could relate to the idea that young women would simply believe their bosses when they said they had their best interest at heart. I think that was a lesson that I learned the hard way early on in my career, that if something seems too good to be true, you have to wonder where the good fortune is coming from and question the motivations behind it. The women never considered the possibility that they were being lied to, that their very lives were worth nothing to the companies compared to their bottom line.

It also gives a new (to me) perspective on corporate misdeeds, how far some people might go to earn a buck, the lies that might be told, and the people that might be harmed. The timeline of events in the book is perhaps the most damning part of the story, because it shows without a doubt how, if the companies and individuals who knew that radium was harmful had owned up to it as soon as they knew, so many lives could have been spared, so much suffering avoided.

In the end, the idea that it was all only for the money, only about profits, just leaves the whole story tinged with sadness, because it does not provide a satisfying answer to the question of why, why would anyone knowingly do this to another human being. “For money” is an answer that is shockingly inadequate in the context of all that these women suffered, all that they were deprived of by these companies.

The Radium Girls is a story that will stay with me for a long time. This story is a piece of science history, as the mystery of radium and what it could do was untangled. It is a piece of American history as the workers compensation laws were rewritten and laws put in place to protect workers. And it is a piece of women’s history as these girls banded together to take on powerful companies in a David and Goliath struggle to do what was right. It’s a fascinating and sobering story, and I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Science Train at the Cambridge Science Festival

Living in Boston affords me direct access to a vibrant scientific community. Just across the river in Cambridge you can find amazing universities and research centers alongside pharmaceutical companies just about everywhere you look. It’s perhaps not surprising that this environment is also home to a lively, 10 day festival that brings hundreds of events around “science” writ large to the Cambridge community.

I'm not really a scientist, but I was pretty proud of my posters. Photo by Brian J. Abraham.

I’m not really a scientist, but I was pretty proud of my posters. Photo by Brian J. Abraham.

Science festivals are a great place to put science communication into practice. This year, I got involved by organizing a Boston version of the Science Train. On Saturday, April 15, small groups of scientists donned their lime green volunteer T-shirts, picked up posters reading “I’m a scientist, ask me a question” and jumped on the T (the Boston/Cambridge subway) to go where the people are and interact with them in a space where we knew they’d be anyway. Bringing science to the public like this isn’t an original idea; we were inspired to do this for the Cambridge Science Festival after hearing about previous Science Train successes in New York. By adapting the idea to run in concert with the Cambridge Science Festival, the Science Train not only served as outreach but was also promoting the festival and the broader selection of science events taking place in Cambridge.

The Cambridge Science Festival, which claims to be the first festival of its kind in the United States, includes a variety of events that offer something for people of all ages. From the festival’s website: “The Cambridge Science Festival offers a wide range of STEAM [Science/Technology/Engineering/Arts/Mathematics]-related activities – lectures, debates, exhibitions, concerts, plays, workshops, etc. – over ten days at a variety of locations [across Greater Boston]. Modeled on art, music, and movie festivals, the Cambridge Science Festival makes STEAM part of the wider culture by illuminating the richness of scientific inquiry and the excitement of discovery.”

Organizing the Science Train mostly entailed sending a lot of emails. It was important that the MBTA know what we were doing, we had to work with the Cambridge Science Festival to synchronize message and branding, and we had to recruit volunteers for the Science Train itself so that we’d get enough to make it a success. We found post-doc associations like the one at MIT to be particularly helpful for recruiting volunteers who were willing to ride the T with us. I also worked to divide the volunteers into shifts and small groups, making sure that there were a variety of scientific backgrounds on each of the teams to cover what was sure to be an array of questions that could come up.

Science Train volunteers. Photo by Erin Podolak.

Science Train volunteers. Photo by Erin Podolak.

The volunteers came back saying the Science Train was a worthwhile activity, but that trying to figure out the best way to approach people could be a little awkward. The red line, which runs through Cambridge itself, tends to serve a more science-minded crowd simply because it runs beneath most of the universities and research areas. Other train lines like the orange line cater to groups of people that probably have less exposure to science and scientists on a regular basis. The scientists on the red line seemed to have an easier time initiating conversations, and my explanation is that people on the red line were more comfortable actually asking questions and/or jumping into a conversation with a scientist.

For the most part, the volunteers reported that the questions were things they were able to answer. However, in some groups where there wasn’t a scientist of a particular specialty, it could be hard to answer what was asked (like a biologist being asked a question about the boiling point of peanut butter). A few volunteers did get a question or two that veered into awkward territory, like personal health questions, which prompted them to explain they weren’t medical doctors. One groups of volunteers was also asked about the existence of God and what their thoughts on religion are, which we’re told got a little bit uncomfortable. Some volunteers also mentioned that some people took the sign “I’m a scientist, ask me a question” as a challenge, purposely trying to stump the volunteers rather than have a conversation. We might word the signs differently in the future, but, by and large, we met our goal because the scientists were able to interact with people about science in a place where they already are, bringing science right to them and making science (and scientists) seem a little more approachable.

Volunteer Scientists ready to ride the Science Train. Photo by Erin Podolak.

Volunteer Scientists ready to ride the Science Train. Photo by Erin Podolak.

I think activities like this can be hard to execute well, but they can be really successful if you get enough buy-in from excited volunteers and the powers-that-be. It’s definitely important to know your audience and understand what you might be getting yourself into. This is the kind of activity that might be most successful if there is at least one person per group who is really comfortable and confident in their science communication abilities. An activity like the Science Train isn’t for the timid. Without a guide or examples to follow, it might be really challenging to use it to learn how to do science communication. Of course, when asking for volunteers whom you haven’t met, it can be particularly difficult to find the right mix of people who are going to be successful at sharing science in this format.

I believe strongly that communities benefit from in-person engagement with science and scientists. That said, not all engagement works or is a good idea. The Science Train definitely worked, but getting to know the teams of volunteers in advance and designing different posters are things that I’ll look to tweak in the future. I’m glad I had an opportunity to volunteer for the Cambridge Science Festival and run the Science Train. Not being a scientist myself, I think organizing this event was a great way to help make community/scientist engagement a reality.

Thank you to all the volunteer scientists who spend their Saturday on the Science Train, here’s to more community science engagement in the future.

AAAS 2017 Conference Recap

The program book for the 2017 AAAS conference. Photo by me.

The program book for the 2017 AAAS conference. Photo by me.

This year, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) held it’s annual conference in my neck of the woods (Boston) so I was able to take a few days away from the office to attend. In the realm of conferences that someone in my field might consider going to, AAAS always stands out because it isn’t strictly a communication conference, and it isn’t strictly a science conference – it’s definitely both, with a generous dose of science policy thrown in for good measure. For its range of content AAAS attracts a very eclectic group of attendees. Anecdotally, I think the conference caters a lot to young people, but there are plenty of mid-career and established people who attend as well.

This was my third AAAS conference, and I think the value of science communication is becoming more and more apparent because it has taken an increasingly important place in the conference line up. Thursday (February 16, 2017) the first day of sessions, I attended the communicating science seminar, which was a lineup of three different panel talks the topics of which were: “Who’s your audience?,” “Scientist motivations, support, and challenges for public engagement,” and “The online scientist: social media and public engagement.” I think all of these sessions were sculpted to appeal to scientists more than science writers but there was a lot to get out of them as a science writer.

A few of my key take aways or sound bites from the communicating science seminar are:

  • Look for opportunities to inject science communication into events and programs that already exist, ie: setting up a hands on science booth at a local fair, to bring science into the fabric of a community.
  • Policy is shaped by the relationship between science, the decision makers, and the public. If the public doesn’t understand or doesn’t like the science, the public pressure on the decision-maker to choose an option not supported by the science can be great – this is why having strong public engagement and understanding of science is so important.
  • There is a difference between simply pushing out information and engaging with people, getting them to feel invested in the science by building a relationship.
  • Most organizations are designed with a top-down power structure, but the public often isn’t looking for top-down lectures from scientists. Adult-to-adult conversations can go a long way toward making people feel respected and thus willing to listen to what you have to say.
  • Try to avoid preconceptions about where people are starting from in their scientific understanding, and acknowledge that sometimes you are not the best person to lead a specific conversation or event. It can be incredibly valuable to facilitate the leadership of others by helping to clear their path.
  • You can step out of the role of “the expert” without abandoning your expertise. This looks like having a conversation instead of a lecture. It includes listening to people as well as sharing what you know.
  • Remember to read the room and consider the personal dynamics to gauge what type of communication is likely to provide the biggest rewards.
  • Often scientists [and communicators] think that informing the public is the goal, but perhaps the goal could be to help the public identify the scientific information that is valuable and useful to them. This might change the relationship people have with science and scientists.
  • Two of the most common barriers to science communication and outreach for scientists are time and a lack of institutional buy-in that engaging the public is a part of the job rather than a side interest. The ideal scenario is one in which science communication activities are seen as helpful to one’s career as a scientist.
  • People enjoy being told a story, it is often easier and more like science to provide just the facts but for the public facts need framing. Giving the facts context can go a long way toward communicating their value.

Overall Thursday brought a series of interesting conversations, with a great lineup of speakers who brought a nice array of points of view to the table. There were a lot of scientists in the room (they did an informal poll by show of hands) who self-identified as interested in doing more science communication, which I think is a great thing. This shows scientists have bought into the importance of outreach and are looking for avenues to explore. A lot of these lessons about effective engagement of audiences are applicable in my work too. For me, the most striking thing was that respect for the people you’re trying to reach is key.

On Friday (February 17, 2017) Naomi Oreskes gave a plenary talk called “The Scientist as Sentinel” that touched on a lot of the ideas that were mentioned during the communicating science seminars. Oreskes is the author of the book Merchants of Doubt about the scientific “experts” brought in to shape public opinion and policy on everything from smoking to climate change. It’s a wonderful book, and, though it certainly filled me with righteous indignation, I would encourage everyone to read it. Oreskes’ talk was about the role that scientists can (and should be encouraged) to take in standing up for their science and themselves. She started off by saying that often scientists want there to be a bright line between science and policy, and as such they tend to want to “let the facts speak for themselves” because speaking up publicly about science dulls that bright line.

Oreskes talked about how their is a continuum of ways scientists can approach defending their work ranging from completely hands-off, leaving it to others to communicate with the public, all the way to the activist ideal, suggesting policy and perhaps even demonstrating (or getting arrested) in defense of the work. She advocated that scientists could seek middle ground, as a “responsible scientist” model of outreach.

The description of Oreskes talk in the program. Photo by me.

The description of Oreskes talk in the program. Photo by me.

Oreskes made the comment that [with regards to climate change] what is rational is to be alarmed, and what is irrational is to be complacent. Scientists, who bask in the identity of being rational, can therefore identify the value in speaking up. She brought up the idea that climate change denial is not about facts, because, if it were, the alignment between a person’s political affiliation and their beliefs about climate change wouldn’t be so strong. When arguments aren’t about facts, they can’t be refuted with simply more facts. When it comes to scientifically controversial issues, the argument is often the same, if we deal with [insert issue here] it will lead to bigger government, and thus constriction of our freedoms. It isn’t a scientific controversy at all, but a clash of political ideologies. Scientists aren’t going to get very far bringing climate data to an economic and political ideology battle.

Oreskes put our current landscape for scientists speaking up against the historical backdrop of the scientists who spoke out against the use of nuclear weapons. Often, these were scientists who were involved in their creation. Her argument was that those scientists never lost scientific credibility for the act of taking a stand. Their science is still regarded with respect by their peers and the public. The same can be true for scientists who take a stand today. One of her closing thoughts was that scientists who have become the target of personal attacks were not attacked because they spoke out in public, instead they became public figures because they were attacked for their work. Ignoring the situation will not help or insulate scientists from the need to defend important work.

For me, Oreskes talk was one of the highlights of the conference, and I’m glad I was able to attend.

Of the rest of the sessions that I attended over the course of the conference there are two topics that stood out to me as particularly important (and about which there were several sessions each). The first is CRISPR, and the ethics, policy, and scientific progress being made with regards to human gene editing. The second was fake news and the distortion of facts. Both of these seemed like trends with regards to what people are concerned about and interested in.

From the CRISPR sessions, one of the main ideas that I took away is that if (as is currently recommended by the National Academies) human gene editing is only urged for “serious” health problems we need to define what counts as serious, and determine who gets to make that decision. If we are urging against changes that could be considered “enhancements” we need to find the line between treatment and enhancement, and, again, decide who will make that decision. If we’re looking to our government to make these policy decisions, it’s important to remember that, due to the separation of church and state federal scientific agencies (such as the Food and Drug Administration) don’t have the mandate to take religious beliefs into account when making decisions, despite the often religious-based concerns held by the public.

From the fake news sessions, what I walked away with was a sense that while it is a problem, there is reason to hope because fake news has always existed. Media has always been fragmented, rather than monolithic, and there have always been issues that Americans did not debate civilly. Fake news used to be found most often in the fringe – radio, newsletters, and in face-to-face conversations. The internet has changed the accessibility and spread of fake news. But even “traditional” outlets like television have been responsible for the spread of false ideas, like the fact that a majority of Americans believe that Sarah Palin uttered the words “I can see Russia from my house” when really it was Tina Fey, pretending to be Palin on Saturday Night Live. From all of this it may seem like people don’t care about or respect science, but they do. If you didn’t value science, you wouldn’t want to have facts or data on your side. Perhaps there is a way to tap into that trust in science.

Overall it was a conference that was very applicable to our current science communication landscape, and that left me with plenty to think about with regards to how I can be most effective in my job moving forward.

Note: I did not individually call out many of the speakers in the sessions I attended (though I did link to some and all can be found in the AAAS 2017 program). This is because, by and large, what I’ve written here is my synthesis of what I heard, sometimes combining several speakers and mostly put into my own words. I did not want to put responsibility for my interpretation of information on someone else unless I felt confident that my notes could accurately quote them. I do want to be very clear that these are not original ideas of mine but my interpretation of what others shared.

What I’m Reading: The Firebrand and the First Lady & Hidden Figures

The more I learn about and bear witness to the world, the more I’ve realized that my classroom education left out some aspects of history that give context to world and national events, and shape how I understand and interpret them. Reading is one of the best ways I’ve found to introduce missing perspectives and fill in gaps in my education.

Growing up I certainly had an awareness about the civil rights era–we learned about Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X in school. But, even though I learned about these important people, there are so many others whose names I should also know, that I don’t. Pauli Murray and Katherine Johnson are just two of those names. Luckily, reading brought their stories into my world, and helped add depth to my knowledge about the various contributions of people of color to the United States during the civil rights era.

The Firebrand and The First Lady by Patricia Bell Scott

The Firebrand and The First Lady by Patricia Bell Scott

I learned about these two women by reading books that I think offered a lot of good information about US history and the role that women of color played in it: The Firebrand and the First Lady by Patricia Bell-Scott and Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly.  Science writing and science history tend to comprise more of my reading list so Hidden Figures was in my conventional wheelhouse more so than the Firebrand and the First Lady, but both books were still quite different choices for me, being written by and about women of color. While I’m embarrassed by how little of my bookshelf came from or is about women and people of color, it is something that I can and am consciously fixing.

The Firebrand and the First Lady tells the story of the friendship between Pauli Murray and Eleanor Roosevelt. Murray was a lawyer, a civil rights and women’s rights activist, and the first black women to be ordained as an episcopal priest. Eleanor Roosevelt was the first lady of the United States from 1933-1945, US representative to the United Nations 1946-1953, and an important political figures in the women’s rights and civil rights movements. With neither woman alive to speak for themselves, the author draws heavily on the letters they wrote to each other.

Being able to see the letters they wrote to each other, especially when they disagreed, was amazing. It really was a snapshot from another time, where people with opposing views could find common ground and unite around a shared respect, treating each other with civility and thoughtfulness. It just struck me as sweet and sad that there was once a time when a young woman could reach out to a political figure and not just get a reply, but get true buy-in and a relationship that lasted the rest of their lives. I don’t think we currently live in such times, although this lovely piece by Jeanne Marie Laskas about how President Obama handled his mail, reading 10 letters a day from the public was a nice reminder about how important it is to have elected officials who hear you.

In telling the story of Murray and Roosevelt’s extraordinary friendship, the author gave an overview of the civil rights movement and the role that women played in it. But it was also an extremely American story, about how regular people built themselves up through education and hard work to leave an imprint on the world through the changes in policy and law that they helped bring about. The book left me not only knowing Murray’s name, but also with a profound respect for her.

I felt sympathy for Roosevelt, being a power broker but with limitations, and needing to figure out what she could do, what she should do, and how to pick which battles were the ones worth seeing through. She wasn’t able to do all that she wanted to, and yet she did so much more than most. But I was glad to see that Murray always held Roosevelt’s feet to the fire. In some ways, seeing Roosevelt’s responses felt like a master class in how to deal with criticism, and how there is always more that we can all do to help improve life for those around us. Being pushed to be better is a gift in many ways, but it’s also an endorsement of your own worth– that you’re worth improving.

Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly.

Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly.

Hidden Figures is quite a bit more well known, now that it has been made into a box office-topping film. Despite there being a movie version, the book is certainly worth your time. It tells the story of the black women “computers” (in the literal sense of “people who do computations,” but really mathematicians and engineers) who worked at NASA during its formation and at the dawn of the space race. It’s been written and said by others that the fact that this story hasn’t been told before is amazing. I certainly am not the first person to notice that this is a trend, the contributions of women of color being erased from the history that gets handed down. I’m glad that this book is as popular as it is because it is bringing this bit of history to the forefront and giving the amazing women whose story the book tells the place in history that they deserve.

One of the important things about Hidden Figures that has been said in this article and elsewhere is that, while it might be about events that took place from the 1940-1960s, there are still trends and themes from then that echo through research institutions today. Certainly for women of color working in physics today there are still numerous barriers to success and discrimination that white women and women in other fields don’t encounter.

Ultimately, I recommend both of these books, they are beautifully written and offer a point of view that I found incredibly valuable for expanding my understanding of the role that women of color played in US history. That context is important for understanding the tumultuous political climate of the world today, and I’m grateful to the authors for telling the stories of these women.

A day in the clinic: shadowing a physician

Disclaimer: Speaking for myself as an individual in this post, not on behalf of my employer. 

There is a lot to be gained from stepping out from behind your desk once in awhile. I work in the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s Division of Development and the Jimmy Fund. Our offices are down the road from the main Institute campus, which is a comprehensive cancer center. I’m fortunate that my responsibilities bring me to the main campus often, but many of my colleagues do not get such opportunities. To help keep our entire division connected to the Institute, every year we have a shadow day where the people who work to raise money to support the Institute  get to shadow someone who works in a different role at the Institute for a morning.

Thumbs up for having a job you enjoy.

Thumbs up for having a job you enjoy.

The shadow assignments can be anything– in the past, I’ve shadowed researchers and the leader of Dana-Farber’s gift shop. Other people have followed members of the community benefits program, patient resources, maintenance, etc. This year I had the opportunity to shadow a clinician as they saw patients.

It is such an intimate experience to sit in on someone’s appointment with their physician. To squeeze into the room with the patient and their family and listen as they detail their concerns and thoughts, looking for guidance and help. I was grateful (and somewhat shocked really) that so many patients welcomed my partner-for-the-day and me into their appointments. I’m not sure that, in their shoes, I could have been so gracious.

The patients’ graciousness was noteworthy, in part because these were cancer patients: people touched by one of humanity’s most daunting adversaries. Their uncertainty resonated and found uncertainty in me.  Sure, I do know a bit about being a patient, but not a cancer patient. I know about cancer research, but from an outsider perspective–not that of physician or patient. This peering into a patient appointment was something new. I knew enough science and medicine to keep up with the conversation, and enough to be able to empathize with the patients, but truly it was an eye-opening experience.

In a morning of novel things, a few stood out to me. One was how quickly the physician was expected to switch from topic to topic. In the in-between moments when we weren’t in the examination rooms with the patients, the doctors darted around the hallways, conferring with the nurses here, with the radiologist reading the patient’s scans there, updating patient records, consulting notes,writing notes, or placing calls to other physicians. There really never was a “down” moment in the four hours that we were there.

For one of the patients that day, the nurse and the physician had different plans for how they intended to handle the patient’s unique situation (another disease on top of their cancer), and they had to devise a single game plan. Knowing Dana-Farber it was perhaps not surprising to see that all voices from the care team got heard, but it was still refreshing to witness.

Something else that struck me about the experience is actually a lesson I learned myself during my own health scare: while physicians are the experts, you need to keep track of your care plan and participate actively. Often patients or their families know more details and the context of the situation than the physician may remember off-hand, especially when the physician sees a lot of patients with similar diagnoses. The task-hopping required of these clinicians makes it impossible to remember all of the things you’ve discussed in prior appointments exactly without prompting sometimes. It’s not imprudent to jog their memory or ask them if they’re sure about something. You can and should question your doctors; if something doesn’t seem right to you, just be reasonable. Listen to their expertise, trust their evidence, but still make sure you’re bringing up your concerns.

It was also particularly interesting how quickly the physician had to change their approach as they went from patient to patient. The patients we saw that morning ran the gamut, and each was in a different stage of their cancer experience. There was optimism of a promising diagnosis alongside terminal cases where nothing else could be done. There were chronic patients and patients for whom the cancer was not their primary health concern. It was fascinating to watch the physician read the room and get a sense of how the patient and their family members were feeling and try to meet them where they were. As with all things, I think there were hits and misses, but, for the most part the personalization of each appointment was a really positive thing.

For me, because I write about forthcoming solutions in the form of therapies, it really felt like I was getting a sense of the meaning of the work. This is what it’s all about: trying to help the people that come for care. I write often about the type of cancer that the patients we saw actually have, so I’m very familiar with the drugs. It was striking to see patients feeling good on some of the newer medications, even in cases where they weren’t going to be cured and they knew it.  Having a good quality of life in the time they have is really significant. You do the best you can with each unique situation, but to at least be able to offer patients the chance to feel better even if you’re not getting them that much more time still felt like a win of sorts. Maybe not the ultimate win, but not a dismal failure either.

I’m extremely grateful to have had the chance to see just a snippet of the work that Dana-Farber researchers and clinicians do. In development, it can sometimes feel like we’re not actually involved in what Dana-Farber does, because we’re just raising the money. The shadow day experience helped me to feel more connected to the fact that everything we do is about helping patients. It was a good reminder of why I chose to work in a non-profit and what drew me to this kind of science writing in the first place. I wanted to be an advocate and an ambassador for science, for a cause, and I can’t think of a better one than this.