BOOK REVIEW THE WOUNDED STORYTELLER BY ARTHUR W. FRANK By Tim Tran.
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Transcript of BOOK REVIEW THE WOUNDED STORYTELLER BY ARTHUR W. FRANK By Tim Tran.
What’s it about?
Spectrum of illness
Patients who have illness have stories to be told
These are important
Define who they are
Attempts to analyse this in a series of
sociological/personal theories of classification
REMISSION SOCIETY
Sontag’s metaphor: remission society
Illness vs. health
Dual citizenship
Visa status – constant periodic renewal
People who would have been dead to enjoy the
living world but always subject to expulsion
“Fear comes and goes as a breast cancer survivor,
but twice a year, at check up time it’s ferocious”
Lack of permanent citizenship
Frank believes we belittle the diversity of suffering
by reducing it to a unifying general view
Sufferers suspicious of this ‘medical reduction’
“When admitted to hospital or visiting a doctor, we
stop being people and start being patients. We
relinquish our identity as people who live in their
hospitals”.
Reconstructive surgery to face – article doesn’t
mention name although pictures of patient shown
They need us but they don’t acknowledge that
In post modern times pressures on clinical
practice, including cost of physician’s time, greater
use of technologies, mean less time for patients to
speak
People still need their specific professionals, but
professions as a group are regarded with increasing
cynicism
Author sounds bitter and angry
One of our most difficult duties as human beings is
to listen to the voices of those who suffer
Ill voices are easy to ignore because they are often
faltering in tone and mixed in message
These voices bespeak conditions of embodiment
that most of us would rather forget as it reveals our
own vulnerability
REVIEW
Tries to identify people with illness have stories that
need to be told, but that doctors do not hear or want to
hear
Thick veil of sociological jargon and excess literacy that
makes this difficult to read but easy to publish
Professional in sociology venturing into medicine/illness
trying to quantify/qualitative analysis of sickness
Tries to take back perceived ownership of the
illness experience from professionals
Tries to express medicine posing it’s own language
on people, but then imposes own sociological
language
Condescending/confrontational, but maybe not
everyone else has such a benevolent approach
Maybe seeing the patient’s perspective doesn’t
come easy to all doctors
Maybe he’s just a wounded patient?
Later divulges his diagnosis of testicular cancer
successfully treated
Different slant from this viewpoint
But does this give him the right to take ownership
of advocacy?
Author seems to have had turbulent contact with
medical professionals – sounds bitter sometimes
considering limited resources/time to treat the many
at the expense of treatment to individuals
Ideal is to have unlimited time and resources to
give individual patients maximally optimised care.
Not always possible
My thesis is that different bodies have “elective
affinities” to different illness narratives
Theories don’t stand up next to real stories
Very occasionally Frank includes illness stories
Desire
Pt dying of leukaemia “maybe at sixty it’s a good
time to bow out”
Lacking desire
Why buy shoes? Why have dental work done?
Diagnostic shock…….to living with cancer
Taking up tap dancing lessons as something he
always wanted to do, but also to keep falling out of
love with yourself as illness attempts to diminish or
disfigure you
It is not dying we fear, but the diminished self
Trying to demonstrate a principle called the
‘disciplined body’
Pt with breast cancer “relief” finally being
punished and paying price for being bad mother
Feels she deserves this
Self pride
Returns to work soon after mastectomy
Recurrence undergoes chemotherapy
Makes informed decision to stop chemotherapy sooner than
advised
Despite medical pressure, accepts advice and makes her own
decision
She makes peace with her aging body
Far from interpreting as punishment sees her experience has made
her more of a person for having survived
Humbling passage about a person’s journey with cancer
And all these people in pain…all these people with aches and all
these people suffering. We walk in different dimensions. We have
access to different experiences, different knowledges. And there are
so many of us too. We could help the normals and whitecoats both.
We could help them see that they’re wasting the precious moments
of their lives. Sick people know what health is. They know it by it’s
very loss….
Live as if it really mattered, don’t waste precious moments