Strokecast

Jelly Packets Last week, the COO of Swedish Cherry Hill Medical Center invited me to speak at the hospital's leadership meeting to share a little bit about my experience as a stroke patient there. Among the positive things I had to share, I also talked about a couple of the smaller negatives, including the jelly packets at breakfast. They use those little plastic packets that are common at dinners. You peel back the foil lid and then extract jelly with your knife to spread it on your bread. The problem is it takes two hands to do it. Give it a try with one hand sometime. That means that I and the other hemiparetic stroke patients in the stroke unit couldn't do it. And of course it's a small thing, and there are plenty of people available to help. But I feel silly paging someone to come to my room and spread my jelly. At one level, it struck me as silly that a hospital hadn't thought of this. But there had to be more to it. Later in the day, I realized why it stuck with me like this. It's because that means ev