Medical Poetry Prize

A major new poetry prize has been announced. The Hippocrates Prize is an annual competition for a poem on a medical subject. There is a separate category for NHS employees and UK students. The first prize is £5000. The only catch is that each entry costs £6. The deadline is 31 January.

Comics and medicine conference

The lovely and talented Ian Williams over at Graphic Medicine is organising a conference called 'Comics and Medicine: Medical Narrative in Graphic Novels'. It's scheduled for 17 June 1010 at the Institute for English Studies at UCL. It should be a real treat.

Confirmed keynote lectures by Paul Gravett and Marc Zaffran

This one-day interdisciplinary conference aims to explore medical narrative in graphic novels and comics. Although the first comic book was invented in 1837 the long-format graphic narrative has only become a distinct and unique body of literary work relatively recently. Thanks in part to the growing Medical Humanities movement, many medical schools now encourage the reading of iterature and the study of art to gain insights into the human condition. A serious content for comics is not new but representation of illness in graphic novels is an increasing trend. The melding of text and visuals in graphic fiction and non-fiction has much to offer medical professionals, students and, indeed, patients. Among the growing number of graphic novels, a sub-genre exploring the patients' and the carers' experiences of illness or disability has emerged.

Papers and posters are invited on issues related to, but not restricted to, the following themes:
•What motivates authors to produce graphic narratives with medical content?
•How does the audience for this growing genre differ from traditional markets for so-called ‘pathographies’?
•What additional insights can graphic narratives offer into healthcare compared with literature and film?
•What international trends are discernible in the production and reception of medical graphic narratives?
•What are the ethical implications of using graphic narratives to disseminate public health messages?
•What are the strengths of graphic fiction in bioethics conversations? In conversations between patients and health care workers?
•How have patients (and patient communities) turned to graphic fiction to communicate health care and advocacy information to other patients, their family and surrounding community, and their physicians?
•How do patient-created graphic fictions/narratives differ from physician- or health-care industry-created graphic narratives? What does this imply about the role played by graphic fiction in institutionalized medicine?
•How can graphic stories be used in medical education and patient education?
•What are the roles of graphic stories in enhancing communication within the medical profession, in scholarship and in the medical humanities?

Contributions are sought from humanities scholars, comics scholars, healthcare professionals, comics enthusiasts, writers and cartoonists.

300 word proposals for a 20 minute paper or a poster should be submitted by Friday 29th January 2010 to submissions@graphicmedicine.org

Abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order:
author(s), affiliation, email address, title of abstract, body of abstract

We acknowledge receipt and answer to all proposals submitted. Abstracts will be peer reviewed blind and papers for presentation will be selected by Friday 26th of February 2010.

A report of the conference will be submitted to relevant journals and websites. All the papers and posters accepted for and presented at the conference will be eligible for development in a themed volume (subject to funding).

Paul Gravett is a London-based freelance journalist, curator, lecturer, writer and broadcaster, who has worked in comics publishing and promotion since 1981. He has curated numerous exhibitions of comic art in Britain and in Europe and since 2003 has been the director of Comica, London's International Comics Festival at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. Paul is the co-author, with Peter Stanbury, of the books Manga: 60 Years Of Japanese Comics (2004), Graphic Novels: Stories To Change Your Life (2005), Great British Comics: Celebrating A Century Of Ripping Yarns & Wizard Wheezes (2006), The Leather Nun & Other Incredibly Strange Comics (2008) and he is the editor of The Mammoth Book Of Best Crime Comics (2008). On television he has been a consultant and interview subject on The South Bank Show's programme Manga Mania (2006) and BBC4's documentary series Comics Britannia (2007). Also, he appeared as interview subject in the DVD documentary The Mindscape Of Alan Moore (2007). He continues to write about comics for various periodicals.

Marc Zaffran, M.D. is a French-born Family Physician and a writer (under the pen name Martin WInckler). He is currently a researcher at the University of Montreal. He has written forty books including novels and essays on patient doctor relationship, the ethics of healthcare and the representation of Doctors in mass-media fiction including pulp novels, television drama and comic-books. He is currently studying the works of a French doctor and comic-book artist,
Charles Masson.

Reminiscing

I was just going through my old files on my computer when I stumbled upon a folder marked 'Humanities'. I double-clicked on it with a smile. Good times.

We once went to _______ Museum/Gallery (Okay so I can't remember where it was..) and saw Monet's work. Giskin had asked us to/made us come up with a poem. And I found the one I wrote and thought since I was in such a good mood, I'd post it up here.

There once was a man who painted
Art so great, a lady swooned and fainted
The useless young miss
Awoke only to a kiss
To find herself all but tainted.

Narrative Remains at the Hunterian

Karen Ingham's new film and exhibit, Narrative Remains, at the Hunterian Museum is a fine example of not only Medical Humanities but also of doing a great deal with very little. Her subjects are a series of pathological specimens, collected and annotated by John Hunter. Neat little jars, with neat little labels, whose contents are anything but - among them, the throat and larynx of a singer silenced by tuberculosis, a diseased liver, a cancerous lung and bowel segment. Ingham's work takes the viewer right inside Hunter's pathology lab as he decides which specimens to keep, and then removes and preserves them. Yet it is not his voice we hear. Instead, the narrative of the remains is given by the patients themselves. It is as if their spirits hovered at Hunter's shoulder while he worked, reading the notes he made, explaining how they suffered and understanding why they died. They are neat little ghosts, calmed by death, intrigued by their awakening, first by Hunter, then by Ingham. If they sound pleased that out of so many specimens, so many dead, they have been selected for immortality, then they should be. Ingham's film may be small scale but it is technically flawless. The jars are lit and photographed like bright jewels, drawing the viewer towards the unsettling contents at their heart, mesmerising. The film echoes the overall effect of the Hunterian Museum itself, with its own extraordinary setting of light and glass.

Everything about the exhibit is useful and moving. The catalogue essays are models of clarity. Part of the film is genuinely funny (no spoiler). This is what museums should be doing - allowing artists of vision to interpret and illuminate their permanent collections - bringing life, light and understanding, allowing the silent to speak.

Narrative Remains is at the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, 35-43 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PE. Open 10-5pm Tues- Sat. Free Admission. Exhibit runs until 5th December.

My longest ever nose bleed - Part 1

I am pleased to randomly state that I have fully recovered from a nasal operation I had over 2 months ago.

I now feel sufficiently rehabilitated and courageous enough to actually write/type down a record of my experiences. I was considering doing this on my blog, but felt obliged to place it on this one due to influences medical humanities had on my stay at the hospital.

For some odd reason, the week before the surgery, I was not even thinking about it. This odd behaviour continued until the night before the oh so dreaded day, as I was forced into planning what I was going to take with me, due to being informed that I would spend one night in the wards. I was so wrapped up in planing my luggage, that I even asked my sister's opinions on which pyjamas I should wear. I ended up taking three manga volumes, my A4 hardback art book, a pot of ink, paint brushes, a pencil case, a Harry Potter book, my glasses (which I don't even wear), toiletries including facial wash, creams, and make up (god knows why I took them) an extra headscarf, pink woolly pyjamas (I forgot it was July, but liked the colour) and my journal book.

I thought fear might hit me like Heathcliff bashing his head against a tree trunk... but it didn't. 7.30 the next morning I was at the hospital, armed with various medication and pyjamas, whilst I still had not one ounce of fear, trepidation, foreboding of any other ill feeling, not even excitement. My family on the other hand were rather nervous.

I arrived at the medical admissions lounge, expecting to wait for four hours, but I was not even able to read 3 pages of Harry Potter, when a nurse called my name, I was interviewed for what seemed the 4th time about my medical history, which I am absolutely sure is all in the notes as I explicitly remember telling at least 3 physicians previously of the same details which got recorded into the same set of notes. The nurse would ask me of my name first in case I didn't know it, then gave me a wrist band saying my name on it to enforce my identity, I felt slightly like a prisoner as the hospital number had a much larger font than my actual name.

The questions flowed on to my asthma, medication, and allergies, of which I was awarded a second band, bright red in colour and detailing the murderous allergens. I really liked that band, it made me feel distinguished and special. The nurse kept asking me stupid questions about metal plates, here is how it went:

Nurse: 'Do you have any metal substance in or on your body'
Dessa: 'Just the pins in my scarf'
Nurse: 'Any metal studs?'
Dessa: 'No'
Nurse: 'Any metal plates?'
Dessa: 'Err... no.'
Nurse: 'Any jewelery?'
Dessa: 'No'
Nurse: 'Any gold teeth?'
Dessa: 'No'
Nurse: 'Any braces?'
Dessa: 'No!' (by this time I was thinking 'surely I answered all this crap at the beginning')
Nurse: 'Any retainers?'
Dessa: 'No' (I pitied her for having to ask all these questions to every patient by this stage)
Nurse: 'Any metal body piercings'
Dessa: 'No.'
Nurse: 'Anything metal that might fall off during surgery?'
Dessa: (I actually paused to think about it here) 'Err... no.'

I was then dismissed and called again 30 minutes later by the anaesthetist, who spoke to me in clear simple language, I enjoyed shocking her into understand of my medical knowledge. Then we discussed my susceptibility to vomiting at the hands of analgesics; glamorised by medical jargon.

10 minutes after this interview, I was again called by the nurse to do the only thing I was afraid of: changing into the hospital gown, I'd like to describe them like a sheet of material that's only purpose in life is to make you feel uncomfortable, thank God for the dressing gown they offered! Despite the rather exposed feeling that accompanied wearing the 'gown' I made a new found discovery involving my feet. Being made to wear tight white stockings to prevent thrombosis, I was pleasantly surprised to find that white socks remarkably suited my feet and made them look very daintily cute, all I needed was a pair of heels and I'd be sorted. The effect was somewhat ruined by the trademark label on one side of the stockings and 'Property of the NHS' written on the other.

The worst was still to come, I had never thought that wearing these revolutionary stockings and horrid gown might prevent me from wearing my trainers, and so, I had to wear green spongy sort of flippers which were too big for my good-looking feet and made me feel like a genetically modified penguin. The idea of wearing the highest possible heels, never seemed more tempting. It was in this embarrassing state that I walked down corridors filled with normally dressed people, in normal shoes and who could possibly have metal plates, whilst feeling incredibly out of place, even though I was in a hospital.

At the lifts, I parted from my slightly smothering family, and remained without any significant emotion. My indifference and nonchalance was even surprising me at this stage, the only thing that was running in my head was how I was going to get into surgery with my hair covered....

Barry's colonoscopy journal

My Mum passed on this viral, which I thought our Resident Colonoscopist in particular would appreciate!

--

I called my friend Andy Sable, a gastroenterologist, to make an appointment for a colonoscopy.

A few days later, in his office, Andy showed me a color diagram of the colon, a lengthy organ that appears to go all over the place, at one point passing briefly through Minneapolis .

Then Andy explained the colonoscopy procedure to me in a thorough, reassuring and patient manner.

I nodded thoughtfully, but I didn't really hear anything he said, because my brain was shrieking 'HE'S GOING TO STICK A TUBE 17,000 FEET UP YOUR BEHIND!'

I left Andy's office with some written instructions, and a prescription for a product called 'MoviPrep,' which comes in a box large enough to hold a microwave oven.

I will discuss MoviPrep in detail later; for now suffice it to say that we must never allow it to fall into the hands of America's enemies.

I spent the next several days productively sitting around being nervous. Then, on the day before my colonoscopy, I began my preparation.

In accordance with my instructions, I didn't eat any solid food that day; all I had was chicken broth, which is basically water, only with less flavor.

Then, in the evening, I took the MoviPrep. You mix two packets of powder together in a one-liter plastic jug, then you fill it with lukewarm water. (For those unfamiliar with the metric system, a liter is about 32 gallons). Then you have to drink the whole jug. This takes about an hour, because MoviPrep tastes - and here I am being kind - like a mixture of goat spit and urinal cleanser, with just a hint of lemon.

The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great sense of humor, state that after you drink it, 'a loose, watery bowel movement may result.' This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground.

MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative. I don't want to be too graphic, here, but: have you ever seen a space-shuttle launch? This is pretty much the MoviPrep experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you wish the commode had a seat belt. You spend several hours pretty much confined to the bathroom, spurting violently. You eliminate everything. And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink another liter of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your bowels travel into the future and start eliminating food that you have not even eaten yet.

After an action-packed evening, I finally got to sleep.

The next morning my wife drove me to the clinic. I was very nervous. Not only was I worried about the procedure, but I had been experiencing occasional return bouts of MoviPrep spurtage. I was thinking, 'What if I spurt on Andy?' How do you apologize to a friend for something like that? Flowers would not be enough.

At the clinic I had to sign many forms acknowledging that I understood and totally agreed with whatever the heck the forms said. Then they led me to a room full of other colonoscopy people, where I went inside a little curtained
space and took off my clothes and put on one of those hospital garments designed by sadist perverts, the kind that, when you put it on, makes you feel even more naked than when you are actually naked.

Then a nurse named Eddie put a little needle in a vein in my left hand. Ordinarily I would have fainted, but Eddie was very good, and I was already lying down. Eddie also told me that some people put vodka in their MoviPrep.

At first I was ticked off that I hadn't thought of this , but then I pondered what would happen if you got yourself too tipsy to make it to the bathroom, so you were staggering around in full Fire Hose Mode. You would have no choice but to burn your house.

When everything was ready, Eddie wheeled me into the procedure room, where Andy was waiting with a nurse and an anesthesiologist. I did not see the 17,000-foot tube, but I knew Andy had it hidden around there somewhere. I was seriously nervous at this point.

Andy had me roll over on my left side, and the anesthesiologist began hooking something up to the needle in my hand. There was music playing in the room, and I realized that the song was 'Dancing Queen' by ABBA. I remarked to Andy that, of all the songs that could be playing during this particular procedure, 'Dancing Queen' had to be the least appropriate.

'You want me to turn it up?' said Andy, from somewhere behind me. 'Ha ha,' I said.

And then it was time, the moment I had been dreading for more than a decade. If you are squeamish, prepare yourself, because I am going to tell you, in explicit detail, exactly what it was like.

I have no idea. Really. I slept through it. One moment, ABBA was yelling 'Dancing Queen, feel the beat of the tambourine,' and the next moment, I was back in the other room, waking up in a very mellow mood.

Andy was looking down at me and asking me how I felt. I felt excellent. I felt even more excellent when Andy told me that it was all over, and that my colon had passed with flying colors. I have never been prouder of an internal organ.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Dave Barry is a Pulitzer Prize-winning humor columnist for the Miami Herald.

On the subject of Colonoscopies...

Colonoscopies are no joke, but these comments during the exam were quite humorous.....
A physician claimed that the following are actual comments made by his patients (predominately male) while he was performing their colonoscopies:

1. 'Take it easy, Doc. You're boldly going where no man has gone before!
2. 'Find Amelia Earhart yet?'
3. 'Can you hear me NOW?'
4. 'Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?'
5. 'You know, in Arkansas, we're now legally married.'
6. 'Any sign of the trapped miners, Chief?'
7. 'You put your left hand in, you take your left hand out....'
8. 'Hey! Now I know how a Muppet feels!'
9. 'If your hand doesn't fit, you must quit!
10. 'Hey Doc, let me know if you find my dignity.'
11. 'You used to be an executive at Enron, didn't you?'
12. 'God, now I know why I am not gay.'

And the best one of all.
13. 'Could you write a note for my wife saying that my head is not up there?'

How women go down in surgery - in the former eastern bloc

I have been to the first women in surgery seminar at an international meeting of surgeons in the former eastern bloc. I perhaps set an unfortunate precedent by being naive enough to think I would just be plugging in my laptop and away I went. By the time I'd discovered the little men round the back who orchestrate it all (cf Wizard of Oz) whose English was not up to my question as to whether open office would do, I had to hand them my stick to translate into the dreaded powerpoint and disappear. My talk was not, thankfully, in the main hall with 2000 people but in the little session right at the back of this vast circular building (concrete, "a landmark in the history of reinforced concrete architecture", hilarious) but wasn't hilarious when my talk came up all - well, slightly - mucked up on powerpoint. I had left it too late to fuss about the line spacing. After all that preparation! And it had strangely lost all the photos of the kids. Had to hotfoot it, racing round this concrete famous structure to my talk at the back.

so, not a complete disaster but a really rubbish beginning. Got there, late, and the introduction was in full swing - but not in English. She put me straight on, and I talked ok, in English of course, without notes, apart from forgetting the name of one of the women surgeons in a photo - I had been going to talk about her but couldn't as forgot her name. complete blank. so had to move on.

Winced through the crap layout of 3 slides and the one of my partner looking official in his work photo (in none of my own does he look presentable like that) but without the one next to it of the
kids and finished it ok.

The plan was to have 4 talks in English followed by a question session. I had been told that there was some antagonism regarding any meeting specifically for women in surgery in this country from other women surgeons. This I have also met in the UK. But it isn't about the women who are already established and happy they are on the same level as the men. It is about encouraging normal female medical graduates - not crazy extreme workaholics but normal types who want a family, some work-life balance AND an interesting job, to consider surgery. I think. So I was looking forward to the discussion panel that I was expecting to sit on.

First there was a good talk by an Austrian surgeon, who had looked at the German speaking countries' proportion of female surgeons. They are better than us, anyway, with some highlights in paediatric surgery (50%!) and plastics. What are they doing right? Rest of surgical specialties all around 10-15% , with the same failure to increase numbers like the non-surgical specialties, so nothing spectacular. A talk on the history of women's involvement with the foundation of the Mayo clinic followed, then we had a crazy talk by a woman in black and white dogtooth suit with bright red hair which was all not in English either - so probably not crazy at all, I didn't have a lot to judge it by - and all rhymed but no idea what it was apart from obviously quite humorous.

This was followed by a quiet girl who'd interviewed some of the country's women surgeons (8 of them) and presented, battling somewhat against the wound-up now-raucous audience, her findings including quotes like "private life has to take second place to professional life, that is the way it is in surgery". I personally wanted to take issue with this, but there was time to talk at the end. Then our organising surgeon who is dashing all over running everything from the company who gave us free vodka (!) and the choice of chocolates to managing the eminent visiting surgeons from the Mayo (there is a historical Mayo brothers connection) gabbled through her questionnaire of women surgeons with no translation. I'd not been given a name place at the panel so had sat in the audience.

(but we'd already been interrupted by the president who had spoken for a while - after translation, the only thing translated, because he was dogged faithfully by his own personal translator as he moved around the conference halls - about how surgery was changing to be more delicate, like women, and had then interrupted again after the second talk to very pleasantly hand us out all great socking medals - including those who hadn't spoken yet - as he had to go off to welcome the international laparoscopic expert who was up next in the big hall. I sat there, wishing I could go to that instead of watching these somethings in a foreign language, nice as it is to listen to..)

We then had to put up with a big red-faced self-important bloke who stood up and started talking - not on the menu, but okayed by our leading vascular surgeon. He went on and on for at least ten minutes, cracking jokes, (none of it in English of course) stroking the vascular surgeon's hair fondly every now and then. Then he burst into "What a wonderful world" (I understood this) to which we were treated along with two whole verses. Not a bad voice, as he knew. But it was not the evening performance yet. I feel fairly sure this would not have happened in any other meeting of surgeons around the hall.

The panel discussion disappeared as there was only a female professor who started some kind of argument to which our organising surgeon replied in the same language then it was all over.
We got given chocolates to cheer us up. Great chocolates.

So, very let down not just by my naivety in not checking and rechchecking my talk, and in not being more proactive (no one TOLD me I had to go to the guys organising to get it on their computer, but then I didn't seek it out either) but also in the shambles and joke that the session turned into. I can't believe how far we have come in women in surgery in the England in that this would never be tolerated in our meetings, nor in those in Austria as I have heard. It is of course a cultural thing (the man-handling of women in particular), but to have a man stand up and dominate the meeting, (whoever he was) patronising us with his song when there were serious things to discuss is just incredibly disappointing.

there, had to get that off my chest.