Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: chronic pain

  • The invisible manager

    Javishkar ReddyJohannesburg, South Africa 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, and my tongue bitten several times. A…

  • Gav’s Frida Kahlo: Heroine of Pain

    Jimin MathewBangalore, IndiaLucy 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 limn…

  • Pain management

    Andrew YimHamden, Connecticut 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 interpreter until the delays and pauses wear us down and we switch back to our pidgin Spanglish. Some days she…

  • Seeking medicalization: chronic illness without diagnosed disease

    Camille KrollChicago, Illinois, United States 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 a disease. Endometriosis is a notoriously tricky disease to diagnose because often only…

  • 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 McComasSalt Lake City, Utah, United States Pain is perhaps the most useful yet most feared human experience. It has been crucial to our evolutionary development, but the modern era has sought to expunge it. The New York Times has reported that scientists may be able to use the genes from a woman who feels…