Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Cancer

  • A dying patient’s perspective on truth-telling

    Shimon M. GlickBeer Sheva, Israel Mr. H, a 60-year-old farmer with liver metastases from a gastric carcinoma, had been in the hospital for quite some time. Jaundiced from his condition, he turned to one of the residents on rounds and said, “Several days ago, I asked you how much time I have to live, and…

  • The god that I know

    Rae BrownLexington, Kentucky, USA When we start down the road toward medical school and residency, the idealists among us have a picture of the kind of physicians they will become. Our perception of the future rarely coincides with the reality that we often face. Ideally, principles that conflict with our own view of the world…

  • The myth of the white coat

    Lauren B. SmithAnn Arbor, Michigan, United States Nana, my grandmother, sat expectantly at the edge of the examining table. Our family huddled near her in the forced intimacy of the clinic room, and I was warm in my white coat. As a pathologist, I rarely wore it since I do not see patients, but I…

  • And a time to die

    Katherine ArnupOttawa, Canada “You’re going to be an expert at this by the time you’re done with me,” my sister joked, shortly before her death from cancer at 51. “Maybe,” I protested, “but I don’t want to learn it from you.” Four years later, I began volunteering at a hospice near my home. By the…

  • God’s menu

    Florence GeloPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, USA “You act like you are waiting to die!” Sophie explains that this accusation comes in many forms from friends and members of her church. “Why don’t you go to the health spa? Give up those medications. What you need are good, nutritious foods, vitamins, and minerals. There is a spa in…

  • Blind date

    Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece “And who has sent you to me?” Working as a private consulting pulmonologist in a healthcare system where referral letters are virtually nonexistent, I always ask new patients to tell me who sent them—a social engagement routine before we get into purely medical matters. It works as an informal survey of the…

  • Jeremiah Kenoyer’s cancer cure

    Jonathan D. Lewis The remedies prescribed in the past by many of the learned (and even some unlearned) members of the medical profession were neither evidence-based nor presumably effective (unless the patients got better anyway!). Here are some samples derived from the therapeutic armamentarium of Dr. Jeremiah Kenoyer: Dr. Jerimiah [sic] Kenoyer’s cancer cure Spanish…

  • A painful but tender embrace: Robert Pope’s Aesculapius

    Caroline WellberyWashington, DC, United States Robert Pope, early in childhood a student gifted in science, chose art as his career, and no one better melds the observing eye with the understanding heart. The shadow of cancer hung over him during the most productive years of his life: he died of Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the age…

  • Imaging in medicine: Fine art to medical art

    Arabella ProfferCleveland, Ohio, United States Studying anatomy was something I had never taken seriously or practiced much in art school. Frankly, I was mediocre at it. As a result, I developed into a mannerist painter and on occasion distorted anatomy to add an artificial quality. I find this strange, considering my new fascination the last…

  • Life is a game: visual metaphors in Brian Fies’s Mom’s Cancer

    Sathyaraj VenkatesanAnu Mary PeterTiruchirapalli, India Motivated by a “desire to give meaning to the lives lived in uncertainty”1 and illustrate the experience of enduring an illness, the creators of comics often resort to visual metaphors that render a patient’s physical and psychological experiences tangible.2,3 In Mom’s Cancer (2006) Brian Fies deploys a series of visual…