[YouTube] I Read From My Book For The First Time. I Was Not Ready.

150 cervical cancer patients, survivors, advocates, and policy warriors sat in front of me at Cervivor's annual summit. I stood there with my manuscript and started reading the dedication.

For the souls who didn't live long enough to see the system change. For the families who mortgaged their futures to buy another month. For the parents who watered down baby food to pay for chemo.

I wrote those words. I know what they mean. But hearing my own voice say them out loud, watching the faces in that room shift, watching tears fall from people who have lived every syllable of that dedication... I broke.

I cried reading my own book. Half the room cried with me.

Tamika Felder and the Cervivor community gave me something I did not know I needed. They let me feel the weight of what this book is supposed to do. Not just inform. Not just expose. But give patients permission to be furious. A community to hold them. And the tools to get less screwed by a system that profits from their suffering.

I have spent 30 years surviving brain cancer and 17 years building movements for patients who deserved better. But standing in that room, reading words I wrote for people I may never meet, I finally understood what this book is.

It is not mine anymore. It belongs to every patient still fighting for care they never should have had to earn.

We the Patients: Understanding, Navigating, and Surviving America's Healthcare Nightmare comes out May 2026 from Wiley. This was my first reading. It will not be my last.

Thank you Tamika Felder. Thank you Cervivor. You helped me understand what is at stake.

Welcome to 2026: The Year of the Patient where the sick shall inherit the ballot.

If you have ever felt alone in your diagnosis, your denial, your grief, your rage... drop it in the comments. This book is for you. This movement is for you.

We the patients.

#WeThePatients #YearOfThePatient

YOU TUBE LINK ➡️ https://youtu.be/CS-H_aRFXcs