Some patients give holiday gifts to their doctors, nurses, physical therapists, or other professionals invoved in their health care. Gift-giving is not required or expected. So, should you? Or shouldn’t you?

Someone does something nice for a patient. The patient isn’t happy about it. Tensions rise. The problem may be mismatched love languages.

My mom’s friend offered me a small tray of cookies. I took one look, and yelled, “No!” The next day, I felt ashamed that I’d bitten the hand of someone treating me with lovingkindness. The episode taught me that illness could make me mean, and I didn’t like that.

I forgave myself but didn’t forget it.

When patients are prepped and ready to start a procedure, a medical professional presents a consent form to sign. That setting does not serve the purpose of informed consent. An experience long ago led to a tip to ensure you make truly informed consent before proceeding.

Stardom comes with power to influence others’ expectations and hopes, which marketers leverage to sell everything from reverse mortgages to wellness products. If you are a cancer patient, celebrities' cancer stories catch your attention in ways that hearing about neighbors' or friends-of-friends' diagnoses don't.

Dr. Arjun Gupta and colleagues coined a term: time toxicity. It’s defined as”time spent in pursuing, receiving and recovering from cancer treatments.” Considering time toxicity matters when deciding on treatment, especially if dealing with advanced, incurable disease and hoping to buy a bit more time.

For years, I’ve been searching for a better term than “survivor’s guilt” when referring to an uncomfortable feeling that may arise in patients after learning of someone who died of the same disease.

Commandments empower you when they inform and motivate you to be the best version of yourself. I wrote these as suggestions for people trying to do and be their best at caregiving for a loved one through cancer.

Suleika Jaouad is talking about The Art of Survival I’ve followed her story since reading her 2012 New York Times column, Life Interrupted, documenting life as a young leukemia patient.

Patients who are suffering may find inspiration in an idea shared by Martin Luther King. The civil rights icon suffered much pain and loss, including arrests and jail time, the bombing of his house, and death threats.

Much of King’s suffering could have been avoided had he chosen less-risky paths. Unlike King, patients don’t choose to get the illness causing them to suffer. Yet, King’s message may speak to patients because of what they have in common:

If achieving a specific outcome matters to you, here’s some advice: Don’t want that outcome. Instead, hope for it. That suggestion is not semantic wordplay. Hoping instead of wanting can mean the difference between achievement and disappointment. Here’s why:

When patients involved in advocacy are ready to step away, doing so may be more complicated than just saying, No more.