When ophthalmologist and co-founder of Glaucomflecken LLC, William Flanary, MD, suffered two separate, unrelated bouts of cancer and then cardiac arrest, his wife served as his primary caregiver. While Dr Flanary received the medical attention he needed, Kristin Flanary, also known as Lady Glaucomflecken, co-founder and marketing director of Glaucomflecken LLC in Portland, Oregon, was left frazzled and worn down. “We discovered there’s a big discrepancy between how closely we look at how patients are doing in terms of distress versus how closely we look at how caregivers are doing.”

Kristin Flanary, who was formally trained in cognitive neuroscience and social psychology before embarking on her career in marketing and communications, has become a vocal advocate for greater caregiver support, noting that their needs are a “blind spot” of the overstretched health care system that needs to be addressed. “Naturally, the patient gets most of the attention—and rightly so, but I do use the term ‘co-patient’ and ‘co-survivor’ for people who are closely linked to the patient. But clinicians sometimes forget that the caregiver is also going through this illness experience,” she says. “It’s happening to them too, and disrupts their life in enormous ways.”