In this hilarious graphic memoir, Rob Wells takes the comics tradition of self-mockery and abasement to a new level, regaling us with the workings of all his bodily plumbing, the mechanics of masturbation, and his worries about the size of his penis, while his graphic avatar, a portly man with his right hand perma-thrust down the front of his pants, frets about making a public spectacle of himself by soiling his pants in public. For our amusement, Wells drops his trousers and undergoes all manner of undignified procedures at the hands of an array of – mostly unlikeable – doctors… Read More
Call for Creative Work: Creative Manifesto, Translating Chronic Pain
From Sara Wasson, Translating Chronic Pain: Creative Manifesto (2017), http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/translating-pain Emerging from the Creative Manifesto, I invite submissions of ‘FLASH’ ILLNESS WRITING, short-form creative work – which expresses a moment or fragment of experience of persistent pain; – which takes either the perspective of a person experiencing the pain or the perspective of a witness (carer or healthcare professional); – which captures any dimension of experience – physical, emotional, social, economic, institutional, medical, spiritual, or creative; – which communicates in any emotional register, positive or negative; – and which can be shared and used by others to try and communicate the vivid, contradictory, and diverse realities of… Read More
Pain Is Really Strange
Chronic pain is often poorly understood by health professionals and pain management is under-funded and under-resourced within our National Health Service. As a General Practitioner, faced with a patient with chronic pain and having less than ten minutes to ‘sort them out’, I know from experience it is very easy to reach for the prescription pad (or, latterly, the prescribing screen on the computer), rather than engage in lengthy discussion about perception, thinking habits and physical remedies. From now on, however, I may well recommend this great little book as part of my management of such difficult ‘cases’. The author,… Read More