Showing 501 - 510 of 3444 annotations

Summary:

This book combines social history with personal memoir. It serves as a reflection on how the various challenges of living with chronic illness have shifted over time, and how they are still real and present for the increasing portion of the population who suffer from ills invisible to others and often hard to account for.  The book's brief treatments of cultural and medical approaches to chronic illness, from ancient practices to "patients in the digital age," provide a broad perspective against which to consider current legislative, political, medical, and personal concerns for those coping with chronic illness or disability. 

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Dying in Character

Berman, Jeffrey

Last Updated: Aug-31-2014
Annotated by:
McEntyre, Marilyn

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Criticism

Summary:

In this collection of essays on writers' end-of-life memoirs Berman combines a fine-tuned appreciation of literary strategies with reflections on how writers, who have defined themselves, their philosophies, their voices, and their values publicly, bring their life work to characteristic and fitting conclusions in writing about their own dying.  The writers he considers cover a broad spectrum that ranges from Roland Barthes and Edward Said to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and Tony Judt to Art Buchwald and Randy Pausch.  Each essay offers insights into the writer's approaches to death and dying against the background of his or her earlier work. 

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Summary:

Following the 9-11 terrorist attacks, approximately 20 New York University medical students volunteered to work with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York (OCME) attached to the NYU School of Medicine to sort, catalogue and identify human remains recovered at Ground Zero. On September 11, Barry Goldstein, Adjunct Professor of Humanism in Medicine at NYU, was to begin teaching a course on aspects of photography to medical students. After 9-11, Goldstein decided to photograph and interview the volunteer medical students in order to document their individual experiences and memories of the events of September 11 and their personal reflections of working with the dead.

Photographed with a simple black background in the "scrubs" they wore while working in the morgue, and with a personal "prop" of their choosing, the colour portraits are intensely sorrowful and candid. Goldstein, who is an experienced portrait photographer, observed that "for reasons I still find unclear, these students were surprisingly adept at absenting themselves from the entire process of picture taking. As a result, the masks that we generally put on for the world when faced with a camera were absent." Accompanying each student's image is an excerpt from his/her interview about memories of working in the morgue and the meaning of that work.

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Tenth of December

Saunders, George

Last Updated: Aug-27-2014
Annotated by:
Miksanek, Tony

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Short Story

Summary:

A chubby boy with a vivid imagination and a terminally ill man intent on suicide share an adventure in survival on an extremely cold day. Robin plays make-believe as he heads to a pond in the woods. In the distance, he spots an emaciated man who appears to be wearing only pajamas. Fifty-three year old Don Eber is dying from cancer that's in his brain. Surgery and chemotherapy have not prevented its progress. He's come to the woods on this frigid day to die with dignity.

Robin finds Don's discarded coat on the ground and is determined to return it to the stranger. While toting the jacket, the boy falls through the ice of the frozen pond. Don sees Robin struggling in the water and realizes it is his fault that the well-intentioned kid is in danger. With great difficulty, Don makes his way to the pond and pulls the boy out. He removes Robin's wet clothes and replaces them with his own dry pajamas and the coat. He revives Robin and encourages him to run home.

Don is now naked, shivering, exhausted, and alone in the woods. But he no longer wants to end his life. He now understands its value, how "there could still be many - many drops of goodness" [249].
As he reminisces about the past, Don senses he is in a warm place. It is Robin's house. The boy has sent his mother to retrieve Don, and she has successfully rescued him.

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This Old Man

Angell, Roger

Last Updated: Aug-18-2014
Annotated by:
Kohn, Martin

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Essay

Summary:

Roger Angell, longtime sports writer, senior editor and staff writer for the New Yorker, and a recent inductee to the Baseball Hall of Fame, gives us a deeply revelatory tour of old age in "This Old Man." Perhaps a lighthouse beam more accurately describes what his thoughts/scenes provide those of us who are younger some much younger, since Angell is 93 years old at the time of the essay's publication who are following him to the shores of old age. Through his words and images he provides brilliant flashes of the present, the near past and distant past, allowing us to see, feel and experience virtually his journey to becoming an "elder" (which he playfully places "halfway between a tree and an eel"). Most revealing are his thoughts on his relationship with his failing body, with memory intrusions ("What I've come to count on is the white-coated attendant of memory, silently here again to deliver dabs from the laboratory dish of me"), with being invisible, and with the still powerful need for intimacy, love and attachment.

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Annotated by:
McEntyre, Marilyn

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novel for Young Adults

Summary:

Annie Howard is beginning high school in Tacoma, Washington in 1950, four years after her father returned from World War II, having been blinded in combat.  Her mother has opened her own beauty salon as a way of coping with her husband’s disability and the loss of earning power it has meant.  Annie loves her father, and maintains a close relationship with him, but is dismayed by his recurrent depressions and his steady refusal to get a guide dog, go out into the world, and respond to invitations to volunteer with an organization that helps other veterans similarly afflicted.  As the school year begins she meets two new friends, a Dutch brother and sister—refugees whose parents were killed in the war and who now live with an aunt and uncle.  Through them, and ultimately through her father, Annie learns some hard truths about the lasting effects of trauma, about the role of acceptance in healing, and about how a more grown-up love involves willingness to accompany others through some of the darker dimensions of suffering.

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Annotated by:
Willms, Janice

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Collection (Essays)

Summary:

According to the editor’s introduction, this collection is based on the AMSA (American Medical Student Association) assertion that the physician must be a humanist, a communicator and an advocate as well as a scientist.  To support these and related commitments, it offers essays that demonstrate how and under what circumstances the introduction of creative arts into the lives of professional care providers and their patients and families may be achieved.  Included in some essays are general themes, while in others there are very detailed descriptions of methodology. Others utilize more standard research designs and outcomes.

What creative arts are included in the discussions?  Visual arts, drama, music, and story-telling stand out in terms of potential and, in some cases, already demonstrated applicability to a medical practice.  Some of the essays propose art forms that can be translated into a useful frame for health practitioners, artists and/or patients and their families.

Some essays include assessment of research projects or various designs of methodologies for using creative art in the medial professional education environment.  Others rely on personal experiences using the arts in the learning and teaching of skills such as communication with peers, patients, family and friends.

The volume is divided into four sections.  The first cluster of essays considers using the arts to illustrate empathy in encounters among providers and recipients of health care services.  This is demonstrated in a variety of settings as disparate as end-of-life situations and dental training programs.

The second section includes examples of drama, music and drawing as part of caring for caregivers.  Through group settings and peer support, art serves as a stress reducer for those whose work involves the highly emotional situations health professionals often encounter.

Section three explains and demonstrates the narrative reflective process, in which experiences and stories are shared among those persons involved as patients, family members and caregivers.  The special situation of interviews in pediatrics is given attention in one portion of this section.

The final section addresses the question of using art to explore troublesome issues that demand change or special attention.  Included are ethical dilemmas and the need for health professions to build bridges to the community at large.

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Annotated by:
Aull, Felice

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Graphic Memoir

Summary:

Cartoonist Roz Chast's memoir is a rich, satiric, forthright, and at times deeply disturbing exploration of how she negotiated the decline of her aging parents. Disturbing because the description of all the elements with which she had to deal in easing them toward death highlights the myriad difficulties and complexities many of us will also face. Her account is centered on her relationship with her parents, moving back and forth between her childhood (unhappy) and the more recent past. Chast brings to life her father and mother's disparate personalities and makes no bones about her fraught interaction with them, especially with her mother, and her ambivalence about having to take responsibility for helping them in their final years,.

The memoir is divided into 18 chapters plus introduction and epilogue. The book has elements of multi media presentation, consisting of cartoons accompanied by extensive text in "balloons"; additional handwritten commentary - sometimes occupying an entire page; photographs - of family, and rooms in her parents' Brooklyn apartment plus items found therein; reproductions of her mother's poetry, typed and handwritten; and, finally, drawings (not cartoons) of her mother in her last days.

Chast notes that she is an only child and that her parents were older than most parents while she was growing up. The implication: the burden of taking responsibility rested solely on her and became an issue while she was raising her own family, when her parents were in their 80s. Chast makes clear that she was completely unprepared for everything that would be involved and that her parents had done nothing and would do nothing to make their own preparations for disability - "Can't we talk about something more pleasant?"

Chast's story begins with her impulsive visit - after an absence of 11 years- to the Brooklyn apartment where she grew up and where her parents still reside. She is appalled by the grime and clutter they live in. A few years later, when her parents are 90, Chast reluctantly visits more regularly, speaks to them daily on the phone, and hopes their lives will continue uneventfully and "maybe they'll both die at the same time in their sleep" (22). As Chast visits her parents more frequently the idiosyncrasies that used to irritate her still irritate her and there is no escape - they are too old and needy to run away from. Complicating the situation, her parents deny their neediness and reject most interventions that might help them in their daily lives.

When her parents are 93, after her mother falls a few times and her father shows increasing signs of forgetfulness, Chast manages to persuade her parents that they should together consult an "elder lawyer" - a specialist in "the two things that my parents and I found it most difficult to discuss: DEATH AND MONEY" (38). Even with the legalities this step puts in place, Chast feels overwhelmed when her mother is hospitalized for acute diverticulitis, leaving Chast to care for her increasingly senile father, prepare for her mother's return home, and worry about how her parents will be able to live on their own. The author makes fun of her helplessness: when she arranges for an ambulette to take her mother home from the hospital Chast congratulates herself, admitting "I had a pathetically large amount of pride in myself for doing things like that" (84).

A year later it is clear to all concerned that Chast's parents cannot continue to live alone. Chast is fortunate to quickly find a spot in an assisted living facility ("The Place") close to her own home. After settling her parents there she must sort through and empty out their Brooklyn apartment. A major undertaking. After a while "I was sick of the ransacking, the picking over and deciding, the dust, and the not particularly interesting trips down memory lane" (121). At the same time, Chast must arrange for her parents' aides, buy furniture and other items - total costs were high and not covered by insurance - "it was enraging and depressing" (128); how long her parents' savings and pensions would cover their expenses became a constant worry for Chast. Money worries became more acute after Chast's father fell and broke his hip, needing additional daily care. "I felt like a disgusting person, worrying about the money" (145). At the same time, Chast mourns her father's obvious decline and resents that her mother is insensitive to her feelings "it was, as it always was, completely about her" (141).

Chast's father dies (miserably), aged 95; her mother lives for two more years, in and out of a nursing home, not eating, rallying under the care of a hired attendant, then fading again. During this period, as the mother herself notes, "her brains were starting to melt." Chast feels the need to "have a final conversation with my mother about the past" (201), expressing the wish that they could have been better friends while Chast was growing up. The response is not what Chast had hoped for, and she is surprised by how upset she feels. Yet a week before Chast's mother dies, the mother declares love for her daughter.

When her mother is no longer communicative, Chast draws her as she lies in bed - Chast's manner of communication, bringing to mind other artists who drew dying loved ones in their final days (see annotations of Sue Coe's "The Last Eleven Days" and Ferdinand Hodler's "The Dying Valentine Godé-Darel" ). In the epilogue, Chast explains her decision to store the "cremains" of both parents, separately, in her bedroom closet. "Maybe when I completely give up this desire to make it right with my mother, I'll know what to do with their cremains. Or, maybe not" (227).

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A Little Something

Haddaway, Richard

Last Updated: May-13-2014

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novel

Summary:

A Little Something is a story of a medical catastrophe for a family: at a baseball game, 10-year-old Justin is struck in the face by a foul ball. He seems OK initially, but he has a loose tooth. His father takes him to a dentist, where, left unattended, he has a drug reaction and loses consciousness. Paramedics take him to a hospital, but he does not wake up. He becomes the still center of the book; three circles form around him.  The closest circle includes the attending neurologist Dr. Goldstein and, of course, his parents. His mother Kath is a pediatric physician; she follows closely the medicine involved and knows well the hospital where Justin is being treated. His father Sam is an introverted financial man; he measures everything in numbers. Their marriage is stressed even before the accident. Kath’s nurse at her clinic, Jonesie, is a steady support. Granny, a Licensed Vocational Nurse, comes to watch over Justin. In a moving scene, she bathes the unconscious boy.

A second circle includes other family and friends, the clientele of Kath’s pediatric clinic, the children, and their parents. These are largely Latino, underserved in Fort Worth, Texas, of 2001. (Kath has chosen a medical specialty that earns less money than other fields—in contrast to her money-grubbing mother, who is satirically portrayed.) Next door to the clinic is a firehouse, where Justin has visited and made friends. The blue-collar firemen are public servants who help make a community work.

A third circle is less defined but contextual for the novel: country folks, like Granny, who are not intellectual but practical. They believe in keeping going no matter what, a folk wisdom of realistic, durable hope.

For three-quarters of the novel there’s suspense about Justin’s recovery. At one brief moment, Sam is sure of a turnaround when he sees (or thinks he sees) a smile on Justin’s face. For nine days Sam and Kath experience hope, anger, exhaustion, expressed rage, confusion, and continuous uncertainty.

Finally there is “the meeting,” a gathering of the doctor, the family, Kath’s faithful clinic nurse Jonesie, and Father Red, a Catholic priest from Justin’s school.  Dr. Goldstein says there is no hope for recovery and gives the medical details of Justin’s brain death, which has both anatomical and legal certainty.

Kath and Sam decide to disconnect Justin from life support and allow organ donation. When Justin must be transferred from the children’s hospital to the neighboring one, Sam carries him in his arms. A surprise ritual is an honor guard of firemen who line the path of the procession.

We read the specifics of disconnecting the vent tube, watching the heart race on the monitor, then the flat line of the still heart. Father Red reads from the Book of Common Prayer. An hour later, a helicopter takes off from the hospital with Justin’s donated heart.

An Epilogue six months later describes a Thanksgiving dinner at the firehouse. Sam and Kath are closer now, and he plans for them a trip to Hawaii. There’s has been, however, no easy “closure,” and the couple combines memories with mourning. 

            

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Summary:

The author is a practicing neurosurgeon, one of only two hundred or so women in this specialty which numbers about 4,500. She was the first woman to be admitted to her neurosurgery residency program. Her father was a surgeon and she was definitely influenced by him and says that, as the oldest of four children, it was always expected that she would become a doctor; but she didn't decide for sure until partway through her second year of college.

Once in medical school her decision for neurosurgery as her specialty came very easily. Oliver Sacks's writing had a significant influence on her decision. She was also influenced by her college sweetheart who became her husband and who also chose to train as a neurosurgeon. He is not practicing now and they do not have children.

Her description of her long years of training are interestingly related with many individual patient stories and also many descriptions of her teachers and peers. She takes time to describe how she views the specialty itself and its power structure and all that entails. Among the interesting chapters are two about her research years, one at the center for cognitive brain imaging at Carnegie-Mellon and one as a fellow in Epilepsy Surgery. The author was fascinated with the complexity of brain function and its relation to anatomical structure with which she was much more familiar.

Firlik found that she loved "life on the learning curve" and that her curiosity was broad. About her last year as Chief Resident she said "I have had my hand in saving lives and I have had my hand in helping to end them: I'm not talking about murder, of course. I am talking about helping people die" (227). She was able to write this book because she kept a journal during her training.

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