During a break in the Graphic Medicine conference I attended in London last month, I was interviewed by Cian O'Luanaigh, a nice guy equipped with a recorder (I almost wrote "tape recorder" but they don't really use tape anymore) and the best name ever. He wrote it up for the website of the Guardian newspaper, and it's now online.
I think this is a very nice piece. Cian was there all day, did his homework, talked to a lot of people, and captured the event. As I just wrote him, I was particularly happy to see his mention of "Comic Nurse" MK Czerwiec, because I thought her talk was excellent and exactly what the conference was meant to be about.
In the past few years, I've learned a lot about the field of Medical Humanities, that little niche of healthcare dealing with what happens when medicine meets patient. It doesn't always go as well as it should for reasons that have nothing to do with illness or treatment. Medical Humanities is itself a relatively new and small but growing field, and Graphic Medicine an even newer and smaller piece of it. My big "take-away" from the conference was that there are a lot of people very enthusiastic about the potential of comics to help improve the healthcare experience for all concerned. It felt like being part of the start of something that could turn out to be big and important someday. Very rewarding.
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4 comments:
Regarding the picture in the Guardian, did she have docetaxol and carboplatin together?
I though gemicitibine was the normal other drug to go with cisplatin?
1. Yes. 2. Beats me. Maybe things have changed in six years?
"I thought of it as drawing a map so that other people following along behind us and having similar experiences would know what to expect."
Perfect. Brian, that's exactly what you did. That's why "Mom's Cancer" resonated so much with me, even though my own health problems didn't involve cancer. It's like a "Rough Guide" or "Lonely Planet" guide to navigating the baffling, confusing, upsetting world of being very, very sick. And confused. And scared.
I'm so glad that health care professionals are continuing to takie it to heart, and learn from it.
ronnie
He really did a nice job. It's a compliment to be a major part of an article that works to cover so much ground so well.
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