20/07/2026
My 91-year-old aunt paid extra for a private hospital room. She got frosted glass on every window — and a nurse telling her she was lucky 🤣
Here's what happened.
She'd had minimally invasive surgery, and the clinic kept her two nights to be safe. Absolutely the right call.
But all the surgeon's rooms are on the ground floor, right next to an assisted living facility. So to protect everyone's privacy, they frosted the glass. Every window, every room.
A logical decision. On paper.
The day after surgery — one night in — she told me: "Something feels wrong here. It's depressing to be in a room where I can't see outside." She was genuinely sad. She'd chosen and paid for a private room, and still, there was no other option. The team told her ....she was lucky, because at least her window opens a little.
She is 91, one day out of surgery, and she could feel exactly what that frosted glass was doing to her. She just didn't have the research to name it.
I did.
I didn't say anything in that moment. Instead, I decided to write them a book.
It's called Healing by Design — the actual science of what daylight, a view, and the design of a room measurably do to a body that's trying to heal: pain, medication, sleep, mood, how fast someone recovers. Real studies, plain English, and an honest playbook for the rooms where no real view exists. Because most of them don't, and pretending otherwise helps no one.
So I decided to share it with my peers and with you here as well.
Because if you know someone building a clinic, renovating a practice, or simply looking to create more value and deeper care for their patients — these details matter far more than most people realize.
None of this biology is about hospitals only either.
Your eyes don't know what building they're in. The same research explains why a windowless office quietly drains the people in it — and why workers with daylight report more energy and better sleep. Why a classroom, a care home, a night shift each wear people down in their own way. And why the room you're most responsible for — your own bedroom — is the one where every one of these levers is already in your hands.
So the book ends with the questions you can ask about your own home tonight:
Do you get daylight on your face within an hour of waking, or do you meet the day through a screen? Is your night actually dark? Does your window still work as a window, or has it become a lamp behind a permanent blind? Can you see anything living from where you sleep?
Those five questions cost nothing. And unlike a hospital, nobody has to approve your answers.
The clinic that treated my aunt is getting a copy. Dah…
It's an easy read. I promise!
If you'd like a copy, just say the word.
And for one precious old lady in one room, it's the difference between enduring a place and healing in it.
Who’s life are you going to change next?
