16th Annual Patient Day
Your Mother Should Know, Your Doctor Should Know Better!
Patient Day - March 2, 2025
Einhorn Auditorium
Lenox Hill Hospital, New York City
Scientific Director
Dan Martin, MD
Program Director
Tamer Seckin, MD
Hi everyone. My name is Gigi Robinson. If you're not familiar with my work, I am a patient advocate and full-time content creator, author, and public speaker. My journey with chronic health and chronic illness started very young, and today I'm very lucky to have my mom in the audience with me who's also a nurse, and she taught me everything I know about patient advocacy and leadership. So this will definitely be a little bit about that. Besides that, two years ago I was, or three years ago now because we're in 2025, I was diagnosed with endometriosis, and that diagnosis was life-changing as I'm sure it was for many of you here in the audience. But today I wanted to do something to close this very impactful event with a meditation that you can all walk away with another thing in your toolbox to really help you on your patient advocacy journey. And if you're a practitioner and you're not incorporating mindfulness for your patients, this would be my request to include that for them. So if you're all ready, I wanted to just leave this meditation for you.
So if you're comfortable, get ready however you want. You don't have to close your eyes, but you can. I find this exercise to be very helpful when your eyes are closed because you can really get into it. And I don't know how receptive you all are to meditation, but if you close your eyes, that's great. So we're all going to take a deep breath in and out. Now, I want you all to bring someone in your life to the top of your mind, to someone that you love very deeply, someone you'd do anything for. Picture them in your mind. Maybe it's a family member, a close friend, someone who has always been there for you. Think about how that feels. Think about that person.
Now imagine that person struggling. They're in pain, they're lost, they're having a hard day. How do you show up for them? What do you say to them? How do you comfort them? How do you remind them that they're not alone? And so with that, feel the care, the love, the instinct to protect and to help them and advocate for them. Don't forget to breathe. Now, think about the person that always picks up the phone when you call. Put them at the top of your mind, the one person that responds when you need them the most. Think about how that makes you feel safe, how it makes you feel heard, how it makes you feel supported. Now, let's take a deep breath in and out.
And now for a moment, turn all of that love and that care that you're feeling inward. Think about your own journey. Think about your journey living with endometriosis or being the mother or the sister or the brother, or the caretaker of a patient living with chronic pain. Think about that uncertainty. And now I want you to ask yourself, honestly, do I show up for myself the way that I show up for other people? Pretty much everyone's eyes are closed. So if you want to raise your hand, if you show up for yourself the way you show up for other people, you can do that now.
But to be honest with you, if everyone opens their eyes, I only see about two hands in this room. If you don't do what you do for others to yourself, you're not alone clearly. And today is an example of that, and it's really hard and it can feel impossible living with chronic pain. I've been there. I've been a patient since I was about 10 years old. And endometriosis, as many of you know, is one of the most painful diseases to live with. But what I've learned in my life as a pain advocate and a pain patient is that advocacy starts when we begin treating ourselves like our best friend, when we begin treating ourselves the way that our parents or our caregivers treat us. And that's how I finally got my diagnosis just under three years ago by stepping into my power and talking to my care team, and to my mom, and to my friends, and standing up for myself in the doctor's office. Any of those people would stand up for me. So I want you all to take one more big deep breath and a big sigh as you let it out.
All right, we're going to do that one more time. That felt really good, all right in. And now I want you to all look around for a second, can make eyes with people you've been sitting around all day, and I want to remind you that you're not alone in this and that every single person in this room showed up to this amazing summit over the past few days, and especially today for patient day. And even though advocacy can feel very lonely, that we're all in this together, and I'm just very honored to be doing this work. So thank you so much. My name's Gigi Robinson, and I hope you all have a fabulous, very restful rest of your day.
