“If I could wave a magic wand and change the world, I would help people see that not everything is so black and white. I wish that people would realize how complicated things are, and it doesn’t have to be one side or the other on everything. I wish people could realize that things are always going to be more nuanced.
I was raised in the Midwest, and living here now, I am exposed to many different opinions and perspectives. I see both sides on a lot of things; at least I understand where people are coming from when they have different opinions about policy and other topics.
In 2018, soon after I moved to New Hampshire, I ended up having this crazy, strange, massive lung inflammation that doctors could not diagnose. I literally could not breathe through my lungs enough to yawn. I had multiple different procedures and ended up having a surgical biopsy done to figure out what it was because they suspected it could be cancer. In the end, they told me that it was stress induced lung inflammation, which was best-case scenario.
Being at Dartmouth Health throughout this experience, I ended up going through all of these experiences of being a patient. Like I had to go to the Emergency Department a couple of times, I was assigned a doctor and did not know who it was going to be, and I was advised to do this and that.
That whole experience was very helpful to me in my role as a Patient Support Corps Volunteer Coordinator, as I am now better able to understand the patients’ perspectives. Knowing that these experiences can be terrifying helps me empathize with patients that we assist. It is not easy to navigate your own care. Thankfully, my mom has been involved in the hospital system for a while and she helped me understand the complexities of things like insurance and healthcare. Now I am able to do the same for the patients who participate in this volunteer program.”
– Sarah Latario, Lebanon, NH
