Let's talk about the word healthy

A tangent #Disability thread, by @_HarryPaul_

Healthy sounds good. We wall want to be healthy, right?

In medical training and practice, healthy is used in complicated ways. Sometimes it means behavior - eating well, exercising, avoiding cigarettes, etc.

Other times, it is the baseline by which we define a patient's status or course.

Healthy is a difficult word for me to wrap my head around because in my mind it ISN'T explicitly ableist. I want to be healthy. I often consider myself healthy. But defining this - especially as a disabled person is really quite difficult.

On a practical level, it's hard to know whether you're healthy when guidelines don't exist for your particular intersection of conditions.

On a visceral level, most people don't consider disabled people healthy. I have a life-long physical disability.

How can I be healthy?

So #MedTwitter & #MedStudentTwitter:

I implore you to think deeply about what you mean when you say healthy, who it helps and who it hurts, and what the alternatives could be.

Non-pathologic is a good one in strict medical contexts. I really don't love in intro lectures during med school when they say "here you see healthy lung tissue"

It's just a histologic specimen. There are myraid conditions which might not present histologically (esp to an M1 )

Maybe some of #PathTwitter could help me understand how you're taught what words to use? What do you personally prefer as you try to be anti-ableist?

@KurtSchaberg @BeccaBrass @PathPod @NicoleJacksonMD @bluehatcomics85 @01sth02

And the rest of #MedTwitter, I struggle with this myself because "normal" is in my mind sometimes more stigmatizing than "healthy"

What words do you use in general medical conversation i.e. rounds, class, conversations with colleagues?

@soupvector @TheRealDoctorT @DxRxEdu

@uche_blackstock @DrOniBee @gradydoctor @BurgartBioethix @EmmGeezee