Humanities resources to support healthcare professionals and patients
When breath becomes air. It was my primary care doctor, calling with the chest X-ray result: my lungs, instead of being clear, looked blurry, as if the camera aperture had been left open too long. The doctor said she wasn’t sure what that meant. She likely knew what it meant. I knew. Lucy picked me Read More …
Ian Rankin. I don’t really blame people for shunning the dying. I try to do it myself, not physically but mentally by painting other pictures in my head. My mother has perhaps less than a week to live. If what she’s doing now is living. Not living, just there. At least I can go to Read More …
What the doctor said: Raymond Carver ‘He said it doesn’t look good He said in fact it looks real bad he said I counted thirty-two of them in one lung before I quit counting them I said I’m glad I wouldn’t want to know about any more there being there than that….’ Read the full Read More …
Commentary Thom Green is drummer for Alt-J – and has kidney failure and a transplant, and deafness, all caused by the inherited condition Alport Syndrome, which came on in his teens. In short videos he talks about the shock of dialysis, how different living with a transplant is, and about his (deceased) kidney donor. There’s Read More …
Maternal Health in Afghanistan, Khalid Hosseini. Inside the old, dingy operating room, Laila lay on a gurney bed as the doctor scrubbed her hands in a basin. Laila was shivering. She drew in air through her teeth every time the nurse wiped her belly with a cloth soaked in a yellow-brown liquid. Another nurse stood Read More …
It was as the snow started falling that she blurted it out not meant for the kids, not meant for here, for the snowwoman with her pink hat and old carrot nose, And once it was out she wished she could call it back in, like a dog you could whistle to, but it wouldn’t, Read More …
‘Where is it OK?’ conundrums. Posy Simmonds. Commentary Posy Simmonds captures and punctures society’s often hypocritical attitudes as sharply as ever. Since she composed this in 1984, laws and attitudes have improved – but statistics are still disappointing. Further info Reproduced by kind permission of the artist Posy Simmonds Breastfeeding resources Guide (Feedgood, Scottish Govt) Read More …
Joy of chaperones. Posy Simmonds. Commentary We are advised to use a chaperone almost always. A perceptive observer, Simmonds puts her finger on the lack of trust implied, and its effect on both parties. Further info Cartoon reproduced by kind permission of the author GMC on chaperones Medical defence associations, royal colleges, and medical schools Read More …
Touch Life – movie from Aeon.co. Commentary A 13 minute film touching gently on anxiety about meeting a partner’s parents, being blind, screenreaders, and a guide dog. Beautifully filmed and edited with carefully framed Edinburgh scenery. Blindness is just-one-of-the-facts, and this feels a very authentic portrayal. Agata, a young, blind Polish woman, plans to travel Read More …
from Ward 64, by Sarah Broom. there is poetry all over the walls of oncology and I want to get out Extract from Ward 64. Read the whole poem (Scottish Poetry Library website) Commentary Sarah Broom was a New Zealand poet who found she had lung cancer when pregnant with her third child in 2008. Read More …