Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: chronic pain

  • The invisible manager

    Javishkar Reddy Johannesburg, South Africa   Photo by meo from Pexels When I was twelve, I was hit on the head by a cricket ball. A few days later, I had my first seizure. Over the years, I have had many attacks, which have resulted in three chipped teeth, a cracked skull, a dislocated shoulder,…

  • Gav’s Frida Kahlo: Heroine of Pain

    Jimin MathewBangalore, India Lucy SamuelPuducherry, India In Frida Kahlo: Heroine of Pain (2017), Gavin Aung Than (Gav), an Australian artist, uses comics to capture the lingering pain and excruciating maladies of the famous Mexican artist Frida Kahlo and her evolution towards artistic excellence. This article analyzes the visual and verbal metaphors deployed by Gav to…

  • Pain management

    Andrew Yim Hamden, Connecticut   Clear glass bottle containing ‘Papine’ brand liquid (opium and morphine hydrochloride). Science Museum Group Collection. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Once a month, Ada tells me about her pain and then I write a script for oxycodone. When Ada tires of my Spanish or I of her English, we use a phone…

  • Seeking medicalization: chronic illness without diagnosed disease

    Camille Kroll Chicago, Illinois, United States   Surgical scars and the expansion of narrative possibilities. By Camille Kroll. I was wheeled into the bright lights of the operating room with the symptom-based diagnoses of chronic pelvic pain and irritable bowel syndrome. When I groggily emerged several hours later, I had a new label: someone with…

  • The anthropology of chronic pain

    Charles PaccioneOslo, Norway The global burden of chronic pain is large and growing. About 25% of patients treated at primary care settings throughout Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas report persistent pain and as many as 1 in 10 adults are newly diagnosed with chronic pain each year.1 Nearly half of those being treated receive…

  • Pushing back into chaos

    Kyra McComas Salt Lake City, Utah, United States   The pathway of pain according to René Descartes: “Particles of heat” (A) close to the foot (B) contact the skin and pull threads (C) up the body, that “open the pores” (D, E) and allows “animal spirits to flow from a cavity (F) into the muscles,”…