Hospital Warrior: Get The Best Care For Your Loved One
Healthcare advocate, Speaker and Author.
EPISODE #88
“All you need is love,” sang the Beatles many decades ago. It’s a song still sung today. And for good reason. The tune is catchy, and the message is hopeful: “There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done.”
Love, after all, is our greatest joy. But it can also be complex and complicated. Loving someone “for better or worse, in sickness and in health,” means taking the good with the bad. And that’s not always easy.
Many—if not most—of us will have to take care of the person we love during an illness. It might be for a day, a week or even longer. Some may find it a daunting challenge. For Bonnie Friedman, it’s a call to action.
Over the past two and a half decades, her husband has been hospitalized many times. Often, it’s involved life-threatening illness with long periods of hospitalization and recuperation. In times like that, Bonnie does everything in her power to help him get better. Love is the starting point for advocacy.
Along the way, Bonnie Friedman has learned a lot about the hospital setting and the very real impact that families can have in making sure their loved ones get the best care. Hospitals are bureaucratic and scary places.
Families can and do make a real difference. They start with love and build from there. There’s one more line from the Beatle’s song that applies here: [There’s] … “no one you can save that can't be saved.”
In this episode, Valeria Teles interviews Bonnie Friedman.
Bonnie is a Healthcare advocate, Speaker and Author. Her expertise is hard-won, based on more than 24 years of advocating for her husband through 14 separate hospitalizations—some routine, some quite dramatic and some truly life-and-death experiences.
Today her husband is thriving, and Bonnie Friedman is sharing her experience through blogging, speaking and writing to help others get the best care for their loved ones too.
She speaks to community organizations, caregiving and civic groups, congregations and others interested in healthcare, advocacy, caregiving, aging in place and related issues. She also blogs regularly and is the host of a podcast, Advocates and Experts.
She is author of the book, Hospital Warrior: How to Get the Best Care for Your Loved One. It is a comprehensive, easy-to-use guide with tips, insights and advice on how to navigate the hospital environment and culture. It is also a story of love, family and thriving.
