by Matt Peters In Andre the Giant: Closer to Heaven, writer Brandon M. Easton and artist Denis Medri examine the life and career of the pop culture icon André René Roussimoff (1946 – 1993). Better known as André the Giant, Roussimoff was a professional wrestler and actor known for his towering build. At more than seven feet tall, he was easily seen as a formidable opponent in the wrestling ring. In the world of movies and television, he landed roles that called for a colossal actor, from Bigfoot in The Six Million Dollar Man to the gentle giant Fezzik… Read More
Something, Not Nothing – A Story of Grief and Love
by Soph Myers-Kelley Something Not Nothing is a gorgeously poetic work of art that focuses on the topic of losing one’s spouse to medically assisted death. Sarah Leavitt masterfully translates the untranslatable- losing your partner, who has suffered for decades with chronic pain. Leavitt expresses her conflict of wanting that pain to stop for her wife and knowing how much she’ll miss her when she’s gone, how a part of her will feel missing forever. Leavitt uses poetic narration and complements it with watercolor paintings, ink drawings, as well as colored pencil art. The print book is larger (9” x… Read More
Brittle Joints
by Liz Argall Summary Maria Sweeney is an artist. She has good friends, a rare genetic disorder, severe chronic pain, and is an ambulatory wheelchair user. In an era of increased (invisible) disability awareness “thanks” to long Covid, Sweeney’s book is a timely examination of what it means to live with a chronic disability, navigating medical bureaucracy, a multitude of micro aggressions from often well-intentioned people as well as experiencing the joys of supportive friendships, love, and the power of micro-affirmations. Pain, especially chronic pain, can disrupt a person’s sense of time. This lyrical work explores the past, present… Read More
Symptômes
By Annemarie Jutel Catherine Ocelot’s Symptômes is a lovely piece of embroidery. A collection of graphic narratives about pain, illness, suffering and loneliness are carefully stitched together to bring agency, if not quite joy, to the female protagonists whose suffering creates the fabric of the novel. While it is hard to know if the story is autobiographical (and perhaps it doesn’t matter), the principal character bears the author’s name, and prefaces the book by letting us know about her simultaneous fixation with medical television drama and her parallel hypochondriac tendencies. She is enthralled by these confident and capable white-coated creatures,… Read More
What’s Wrong: Personal Histories of Chronic Pain and Bad Medicine
by Elizabeth A. Trembley Four individuals’ disturbing stories of chronic illness illuminate how the American medical system often fails to help people who are not cis, white, heterosexual men, leading the author to better contextualize her own frustrating experiences and offer all of us hope for a way forward. Writer, illustrator, and teacher Erin Williams (Commute: An Illustrated Memoir of Female Shame, 2019, etc.) adds to the growing body of graphic medicine with an illustrated work that is part graphic memoir, part interviews, and part data research. What’s Wrong: Personal Histories of Chronic Pain and Bad Medicine will help… Read More
PMR: My Pretty Miserable Reality
by Soph Myers-Kelley Having been read online in over 45 different countries, PMR Polymyalgia Rheumatica: My Pretty Miserable Reality packs an impactful punch in the chronic illness world. This book focuses on the author’s experience with Polymyalgia Rheumatica (PMR) which she describes as “a severe, self-limiting inflammatory disorder of unknown cause resulting in muscle pain and stiffness in neck, shoulders, and hips” (2). Through a brief read, one can experience the author’s sorrow, pain, moments of joy and triumph, searches for answers, regiments, and attempts towards healing. She shares plenty of tips and tricks to managing chronic illness while also… Read More
LOVF: The Illustrated Diary of a Man Literally Losing His Mind
awaiting review
Back, Crack & Sack (& Brain)
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