Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Cancer

  • Taking a history in the ICU: Social: Does your husband still smoke?

    Sophia Valesca GörgensAtlanta, Georgia, United States He smokes when he thinks I’m not looking,she tells me, then glances at him as ifexpecting him to contradict her but the ventilator is pressed to his faceand his eyes are lidded dim with midazolamfor sedation, fentanyl for pain. There is pain in her words, her body, and she…

  • Campbell de Morgan (1811–1876)

    Described as a man of great accomplishment and unusual ability, Campbell de Morgan was a surgeon and a professor at the Middlesex Hospital in London. His main interest was neoplasia, and he participated in the debate on whether cancer arises locally and then spreads to the lymph nodes or has a multi-centric origin. He vigorously…

  • here

    Slavena Salve NissanNew York, New York, United States this is the third time this week a baby girl in a pink hatwith her grandfatherin the lobby of the cancer building me at the table next to themtuna sandwich unwrappedbut suddenly not hungry i know why they’re here he whispers things to hera lullaby?an i love…

  • Margaret Edson’s W;t: Lessons on person-centered care

    Atara MessingerToronto, Ontario, Canada American playwright Margaret Edson’s 1998 play W;t has been described as “ninety minutes of suffering and death mitigated by a pelvic exam and a lecture on seventeenth-century poetry.”1 When W;t was first published, most theater companies rejected it on the grounds that its subject matter would be too difficult for audiences…

  • Shaking hands

    Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece There is a fine but clearly visible tremor in the pale, smooth, well-groomed hands of my visitor. He makes an effort to keep his face still and composed, lips forcedly stiff, eyes unsmiling, the whole look somber. “I have had a new scan,” he says, placing the buff envelope on the desktop.…

  • Not by blood

    Simon EdberPittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States Raven knows exactly how she joined the family: “She didn’t want me so she took me to the hospital, and then you came and bought me from the hospital.” Well, almost exactly. “I didn’t buy you,” Cathy corrects her from across the room, smiling but not daring to laugh. Even…

  • Aspects of distancing

    Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece I will call him Bill. We had been unaware of each other’s existence until we first met as elected members of a professional committee in our local medical association. In this capacity we had been working together for several years, convening every two or three months depending on the current agenda. Different…

  • Poppy power

    John Graham-PoleGainesville, Florida, United States The poppy’s juice . . .brings the sleep to dear Mama— Sara Coleridge, Pretty Lessons in Verse for Good Children In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree— Samuel Coleridge, Kubla Khan, penned on waking from an opium-induced dream Of all God’s floral bounty, only papaver somnifera drips its beads…

  • Surrealist art and the resolution of absurd

    Simon WeinPetach Tikvah, Israel Epigram “There must be a clear preoccupation with death—intimations of mortality . . . Tragic art, romantic art, etc., deals with the knowledge of death.” Mark Rothko, 1958, The Pratt Institute, on the function of art The Problem Fear of death permeates medical practice despite our best efforts to modulate serotonin,…

  • Unfinished business: End of life care and regrets in the films of Akira Kurosawa

    X.M. GriffithsTuckahoe, NY, USA Death and mortality were recurrent themes in Akira Kurosawa’s works but the director examined the issues most acutely in the films Ikiru (1952) and Madadayo (1993). Though the two films hail from different periods of his career, in each the main character is forced to face their own mortality, which provides…