by GAtherton | Jan 29, 2019 | Patient stories, Video
The Hippocrates £5000 NHS first prize (hippocrates-poetry.org) went to former counsellor Kate Compston from Cornwall for a poem about revealing the diagnosis of dementia. The Hippocrates Prize is an annual award for poetry and medicine with a closing date of 31st...
by GAtherton | Jan 29, 2019 | Patient stories
I imagine your birthmyth: earth humid, steaming with gases, plasma rising, cells undivided,blood floating homeless.It was the first day, not the sixth, before darkness became night and night became ebony or jet.Your unformed jaguar-leopard presencehung like a...
by GAtherton | Jan 29, 2019 | Patient stories
Dear Doctor, I have read your play,Which is a good one in its way,Purges the eyes, and moves the bowels,And drenches handkerchiefs like towelsWith tears that, in a flux of grief,Afford hysterical reliefTo shatter’d nerves and quicken’d pulses,Which your...
by GAtherton | Jan 29, 2019 | Patient stories
Finding Poetry in IllnessPhoto by C.J.W. Johson, 1870 BY JENNIFER NIX On the winter solstice of 2008, I am wobbling in orange Wellies atop a bed of rocks and sea anemones, making my inelegant way to the “big rock.” Cupped in my right hand is a medicine bag holding a...
by GAtherton | Jan 29, 2019 | Patient stories
BY DANIELLE OFRI Toxic sock syndrome. That’s the first thing we noticed when we entered the hospital room. For those gentle readers who are not familiar with such sensory assault, toxic sock syndrome is the clinical term for the rank odor that accompanies damp, fetid...
by GAtherton | Jan 29, 2019 | Living with Aspergillosis, Patient stories
I have been suffering from ABPA for almost 4 years now. My first experience with ABPA led me to the hospital with pleurecy, sepsis & pneumonia. They did not know at that time that I had ABPA, and thought instead that I had Microbacterium Avium Complex. For another...