Wellesley College Blue Cancer Society @bluecancersociety - Tumblr Blog

You may not become the best doctor in the world, or this country, this state or city. Hell, you may not even be the best doctor on your street, at your hospital or clinic, or the best doctor on a hospital floor or in a room at a given time. But when a patient comes to you, scared the headaches, the chest pains, whatever they’ve been having for months might be something worse, at that moment, YOU are their best chance for survival. You are that patient’s best hope, and proving yourself worthy of that responsibility is the only title you should ever care about winning.

A practicing physician for 40 years, and one who still hasn’t lost sight of what truly matters in this profession: the patients. (via ashleymd7)

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Los Angeles–based designer Emily McDowell was diagnosed with Stage 3 Hodgkin’s lymphoma at age 24, enduring nine months of chemo and radiation before going into remission.

“The most difficult part of my illness wasn’t losing my hair, or being erroneously called ‘sir’ by Starbucks baristas, or sickness from chemo,” McDowell writes on her website. “It was the loneliness and isolation I felt when many of my close friends and family members disappeared because they didn’t know what to say, or said the absolute wrong thing without realizing it.”

The 38-year-old designer has been cancer-free ever since. But the emotional impact of the experience lingered, inspiring her to design a newly launched series of Empathy Cards—emotionally direct greeting cards that say the things she wanted to hear when she was ill.

The blurbs about each card are great to read (click on the photos), as is the Slate article describing the inspiration for the card line