Episode 0.5: Remembrances (Transcript)
The transcript for Episode 0.5: Remembrances
As co-hosts Anna and Bryn prepare to schedule upcoming episodes for the show, they wanted to give space to some sad news about their friend and co-host, Roger.
Transcript
Anna: Hello, this is Anna Chudyk, one of your cohosts from As PER Usual. We're hard at work on setting things up and securing speakers for our episodes, but we thought it was important to pause and take some time to share something major and sad that happened since we recorded our last episode. Our dear friend, colleague and co host Roger Stoddard died unexpectedly in December of 2022 due to the culmination of health issues that he was experiencing over the last while. He is clearly missed and will forever be remembered, so we wanted to take the time to honor him by sharing some of our memories of him with you.
Bryn: Thanks, Anna. I met Roger when I joined the Canadian Mental Health Association local branch here in Saint John. This was probably back in 2005, 2006, and he was sitting as president for the local branch, and I became the vice president. There was a space available on the board, and so I became his partner in crime, and I didn't realize how much of a role he was playing in my life moving forward.
We did that work, but it really wasn't until our paths crossed about eight years ago that we got to know each other better, because we were both sitting on the Grant Development Committee for the New Brunswick Strategy for Patient Oriented Research Primary and Integrated Healthcare Innovation Network.
He was generous with his spirit and his story as a caregiver with someone, for someone living the mental illness of a patient with increasingly complex conditions that we joked were so complex that he truly was a unicorn.
And in some ways, he truly was, I think, because it really could be magical to hear the wisdom that was heavily laced with optimism throughout his stories, even when we talked about something so seriously as his own health or the challenges that we were seeing and trying to work on together in health care. We've lost a great voice from our past conversations and moving forward, and more importantly, we've really lost a good man.
Anna: Thanks for sharing that, Bryn.
I met Roger about five years ago now it would be we are both members of a patient engagement committee that was from across Canada in virtual, and somebody had actually said that Roger was a really strong advocate and that he was very kind and that he had lots of great ideas. And I was actually just beginning to venture into patient engagement and research. So they suggested that if I get a chance, I should try to get to know Roger a little better, as he could potentially have a big impact on my research. So the committee was splitting off into little subcommittees and Roger volunteered for a group, and I saw that as my opportunity. So I joined the same group as them, and we ended up working together and just got on really well. So I asked him if he'd like to be a patient partner on a scoping review that I was just starting that looked at models and frameworks of patient engagement in health services research.
And from then on, we ended up partnering on a really long three-year study where we looked at the different kind of activities and impacts of patient engagement that was occurring all across Canada. And from that, I really not only became a colleague of his, but also I considered him one of my closest friends, and I had the pleasure and the honor of getting to learn a lot from him. And one of the things that really, really stuck out for me was the power of positivity. As Bryn mentioned, he did have a lot of different healthcare conditions and things that brought certain challenges to his life every single day. But he always treated those as opportunities and really tried to find the good in what he was experiencing and just always talked about how instead of sitting around and feeling sorry for himself, what he wanted to do was take the opportunity to take what he was presented with and shift it so that he could help others benefit from his experiences. And something else that he always taught me was the importance of never asking for more than you could give. So, Roger was always reliable, and at the same time, he was beyond understanding.
So whenever I needed him, he'd be there. And at the same time, if there was busy periods or things that came up, he'd always understand. And he really taught me the importance of that give and go. So, reliability not only means showing up, but also voicing what you can and can't do and accepting people exactly where they were. And what I'll carry forward with me is the power of laughter. He had the most funny, funny sense of humor, and no matter what was going on, he would always bring that forward. And I always called him on my “Chatty Cathy”, because he always had so much to talk about and had so much wisdom about so many things.
And most importantly, he always talked about and made me really see that we could all make a difference no matter what was going on in our lives. And that it was so important that we, as researchers, we as users of the healthcare system, to the best that we are able to try to apply our knowledge, our wisdom and our ability to get out and do things, to actually try to do things and to work together to make things better for us and for those around us. And for that, I'll forever be grateful to you, Rog.
Bryn: Thanks, Anna. And thanks everybody who's watching and listening and sharing space with us as we remember someone who was just so lovely and kind and I think had such an impact on the both of us, both personally and professionally. It's going to be hard moving forward with this project. We are going to move forward with the project because we both believe in what Roger believes in, that we can each make a difference and lend our voices to contributing to that difference. But we won't forget him. And we'll always carry with… He'll be there with us in that third seat for every episode.
And so we just wanted to let everyone know what was going on. And if you have any questions, we're going to be scheduling our next episodes in the next couple of weeks. We'll be reaching out to some folks, but if there's anything you have a question about, you want to maybe take part in it and you want to know how you can take partners, the first thing you can do is like, subscribe, share all those good things. We're going to be on Spotify and on iTunes for the podcast and on YouTube as well. If you have ideas, you can share them to our email addresses, Anna.asPERusual@gmail.com, and Bryn.asPERusual@gmail.com, we also have all this on our Substack, asperusual.substack.com, and we'll have all that at the end of the video as well.
So, again, thank you for taking a few moments with us and we look forward to discussing how we can change things and make patient engagement the standard, or, “as per usual”, moving forward. Thanks.