Tag: illness
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Morning rounds
Alan Blum Tuscaloosa, Alabama, United States During my internship, residency, and fellowship in the late 1970s, I kept a visual journal, filling several notebooks with patients’ stories, clinical vignettes, snippets of overheard conversations, and sketches. The two collages in this gallery, drawn in my usual medium of black ballpoint pen on small index cards,…
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An avalanche of white tissues
Gail GhaiSarasota, Florida, United States He gives me a golden pearl to vanquish the sputtering sputum cough. A red tablet to quell the scarlet flushing, and an ivory capsule to squash the bronchial terrorists that have invaded the walls of my chest. He crushes ice for lemonade to drown the cactus spines in my throat.…
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De Profundis: Oscar Wilde’s narrative of mental anguish
Anthony G. Chesebro Stony Brook, New York, United States Oscar Wilde. Photo by Napoleon Sarony, 1882. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. “There is only one season, the season of sorrow.”1 Imprisoned for a relationship that was criminalized by the government of his time, in 1897 Oscar Wilde had spent two years in jail. Finally granted…
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Learning to heal
Jeanne Bryner Nora Mazur Newton Falls, Ohio, United States Top pieced by Jeanne Bryner Quilting done by Nora Mazur Jeanne Bryner: Quilts are important in my Appalachian culture. Narratives of beauty and truth are pieced together, preserving family history. This quilt contains photos of a special family of international sisters and brothers in the…
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Lessons from the black hole
Columba Quigley London, United Kingdom Frida Kahlo, Wounded Stag The episode occurred some few years ago, when I was working in palliative medicine, caring for those with advanced and often incurable disease. As I walked onto the ward early one morning, a woman whom I had been seeing on a daily basis for symptom…