Patient Stories
Listen to all the winning Hippocrates NHS poems
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...
Panthera by Parthenia M. Hicks
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...
Dear Doctor, I have Read your Play BY LORD BYRON (GEORGE GORDON)
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 catastrophe...
Finding Poetry in Illness: A reader’s journey of self-transformation from disease to ease.
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...
The Poetry Ward A doctor dispenses poems to patients and medical students.
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...
Welcome to my Aspergillosis page!
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...
Sue Hurlburt
A couple of days after the emergency surgery on 1/30/2010 to literally save my life, one of my infectious disease doctors (I had 5) asked me what I thought happened. I told her that I thought it was a "Perfect Storm" of sorts and she agreed. You may ask, what...
Steph Smith
This portrait of Steph by her mother Liz is reproduced here as one of only three recorded cases we currently know of where a healthy person has been struck down with invasive aspergillosis after an accidental exposure. We do not know if Steph accidentally inhaled a...
Serena Wells
I was diagnosed back in 2006 with Invasive Aspergillosis in both the upper lobes of my lungs. I have been on and off several different Anti-Fungal's over the last 4 years. I am currently on Noxafil after my doctor's consulted with Dr, Denning, after a very scary time...