by Matt Peters Awareness and prevention of type 2 diabetes, especially among urban Native Americans, was the goal of a comic book published by the Arizona State Museum (ASM) in late 2011. It’s Up 2 You! was created by ASM’s Head of Community Engagement Lisa Falk and artist and educator Ryan Huna Smith, who had previously worked on Jon Proudstar’s original Tribal Force comic (Mystic Comics, 1996). Type 2 diabetes is the most common form of diabetes, a chronic condition caused by insufficient production of insulin, a hormone that helps regulate blood glucose (sugar) levels. It can result in… Read More
Connecting Threads – Five Siblings Lost and Found
by Janet Chan Who am I? Where did I come from? These questions are ones that many adoptees may have found themselves asking. In Connecting Threads: Five Siblings Lost and Found, EM Blake shares her personal experience of being adopted and finding answers to these compelling questions. Blake takes us on a journey through her early life with her adoptive family to the discovery of her biological family as an adult. Along with the questions of identity, she also addresses the challenges of not knowing your family medical history. Removed from her home at an early age, Blake was adopted… Read More
Ripple Effects
By PF Anderson Ripple Effects, from Fanbase Press, is one of my absolutely favorite graphic novels. I can’t stop talking about it to pretty much everyone around me. Given the slightest opportunity, I bring it up. One of the first things I say is, “This is like a master class in how to do health literacy. I expect this to become a model that others follow.” More on that shortly. Meanwhile, if you don’t have time to read the rest of this review and are teetering on the fence about whether or not to buy it, skip the review… Read More
Medical Mentions Book Review VIII
Medical Mentions is a group of graphic works. The graphic works reviewed here are books whose primary topics are not medical, and yet they cover a medical topic with some depth at some point in the work. The rest of the work might be fictional or nonfictional, while the medical portion is often technical and five pages or more. The reviewer will usually neither recommend nor discourage reading the work, except when the rest of the work is deemed outstanding or terrible, respectively. Typically, six graphic works will be part of the review with one paragraph for each. Prior Medical Mentions… Read More
The Truth About Stacey
Review by Sheila Ngoc Pham The Baby-Sitters Club series was a window into many different worlds while I was growing up. After all, it was through these books that the words “brittle diabetic” entered into my vocabulary and how I first learnt about diabetes. Stacey McGill’s life-altering condition was ever present and sensitively handled in the books; her best friend Claudia Kishi always ensured there were pretzels for her to snack on while the rest ate sugary American junk food at their club meetings. The Truth About Stacey is one of a number of books from the original series that’s… Read More
Mr. S Changes Doctors: Clinic Handoff Comic in Annals of Internal Medicine
The short comic “Mr. S Changes Doctors” was created by Comic Nurse MK Czerwiec, in collaboration with University of Chicago physicians Amber Pincavage and Vineet Arora. Click through for full comic here. In his post highlighting the Annals articles to be used for medical teaching, under the category “Humanism and Professionalism,” Annals editor Darren Taichman writes, “This short graphic narrative succinctly tells the story of a patient whose blood work “fell through the cracks” during the transition from one primary care doctor to another. Use this story to: Ask your graduating senior residents how they will plan for the transition… Read More
The Truth About Stacey
Special guest review by Kerri Sparling of the diabetes blog sixuntilme.com. Stacey McGill had diabetes and – holy islets – she was cool. She was one of the lead characters in Ann M. Martin’s The Baby-Sitters Club series, acting as treasurer of the club. You can go deep in this wiki, where Stacey is described as having “a very sophisticated style, which comes from having lived in New York. She loves wearing flashy clothes and jewelry and doing different things with her hair, which she keeps looking fabulous.” FABULOUS! Some of Stacey’s likes are cited: “babysitting, math, money, shopping, pigs, Mary Poppins,… Read More
Texting My Pancreas
Creative and funny online comics by Kim Vlasnik, discovered via everyone’s pals at I Heart Guts. From Kim’s bio page, Living with diabetes comes with its own unique set of challenges: in addition to the physical things like injections or carb counting, we deal with emotions, anxieties, and fears that most people have the luxury of never knowing. Until I found the diabetes online community (DOC) in late 2009, I had no idea how much I needed the support it can offer. For me, living with diabetes feels much more bearable when I think of it as a team sport. I began writing Texting My Pancreas in… Read More
Diabetes is After Your Dick!
Cathy Leamy (Metrokitty) has put her comic “Diabetes is After Your Dick” online. It is also available for purchase from her site. Leamy presented on this patient education comic at the 2012 Toronto Comics & Medicine conference. The podcast of her talk is here. Guest review by Sumin Kim, student in the “Comics Narratives: Illness, Disability, & Recovery” course, Art Therapy Program, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I chose to review the comic “Diabetes is after your dick!” among a bunch of books because the title was so fascinating to me. Diabetes, relating to dick? How interesting! It is really… Read More
Sugar Baby
Guest review by Hannah Marie Williams, student in the “Comics Narratives: Illness, Disability, & Recovery” course, Art Therapy Program, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. “Sugar Baby,” by Nomi Kane, is a personal narrative comic about her experience getting diagnosed with diabetes, and a series of childhood experiences after. What I really appreciated about this particular story was the stories that did not have to do with disability directly, like the section “Zewish,” and the over-arching narrative of her wanting a dog. Too often in disability narratives, I feel as if the parts of the subject’s life that don’t deal… Read More