Narrative Medicine

Narrative Medicine Monday: Heroin/e

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In Cheryl Strayed’s essay “Heroin/e” she writes about our ways of facing death, dying, grief and the will to live. Strayed loses her mother to cancer and suffers her own descent into addiction. Strayed’s love for her mother is evident and the loss she feels is acute. When her mother first learns of her diagnosis, Strayed recounts them silently entering the restroom, “Each of us locked in separate stalls, weeping. We didn’t say a word.” Strayed describes the numbing of pain and the warping of time for each of them: “The days of my mother’s death, the morphine days, and those that followed, the heroin days, lasted only weeks, months–but each day was an eternity, one stacked up on the other, a cold clarity inside of a deep haze.”

Writing Prompt: What does it feel like, in a physical sense, to suffer from addiction? From grief? Do you think addiction and grief are linked? Why or why not? Think of your own experience or a time you’ve witnessed this in a patient. Write for 10 minutes.

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Narrative Medicine

Narrative Medicine Monday: Erasure

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Student and poet Thomas Nguyen writes of memories and loss in “Erasure.” In his poem Nguyen is instructional, warning how time affects our connection to those we’ve lost: “Accept that time makes things distant, that his absence doesn’t bleed into your memories as much as it used to.” There are only a few significant people in my life who have died, but I can identify with Nguyen who needs to try “harder and harder to remember the last time” he saw his mentor.

Nguyen notes that the patient speaks of his melaonmas as if they were part of his garden: “My dermatologist taught me how to care for them.” Nguyen goes on to contrast this with the green moss on the windows of his home. Do you agree with Nguyen that “life always adds?” Do you find this contention comforting or suffocating, or both?

Writing Prompt: Have you spent time with a loved one or patient who was nearing death? If time has passed, how have your memories of this person been affected? Recall the last time you saw them. Outline the details, like Nguyen’s memory of “neatly-pressed khakis.” Write for 10 minutes.

 

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Narrative Medicine

Narrative Medicine Monday: How to Tell a Mother Her Child Is Dead

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Naomi Rosenberg, an emergency room physician, writes a gripping essay in the New York Times entitled “How to Tell a Mother Her Child Is Dead”. She writes her detailed and heart-rending instruction in second person. Is her use of second person effective? Can you see yourself in this situation, having to deliver the most terrible news? Those of us in medicine have had to deliver bad news, often frequently: a cancer diagnosis, a chronic debilitating illness diagnosis, a loved ones imminent or unexpected death. Rosenberg brings the reader into her situation and hints at the lessons she’s learned on how and how not to approach such a grueling task.

Writing prompt: Have you ever had to deliver bad news? If you’ve had to do this many times what lessons have you learned? If you’ve received bad news, how was it delivered? How do people respond differently to difficult news?

 

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