Graphic Medicine
Home / end of life care

36days

by

by Katya Robin Paul Flippen’s 36days records the final phase of his father’s life, a disabled veteran undergoing medical care. The title 36days omits the usual space between words, compressing the period into a single unit. Thirty-six image panels are interspersed throughout the spare sequential text. All the image panels are grey, daubed and abraded with a variety of textures. They remind me of miasma, the obsolete medical theory that disease was caused by bad air. Firm ink line drawings hold their space over these foggy backgrounds. Engineering diagrams, partial maps, medical equipment and ornamental swirls ooze from a telephone… Read More

All Death Matters

by

by Felix Cheong You can dodge taxes (as many successful people have done). But the one fact you can’t avoid is death. Yet among Asians, we often wave away the word as if saying it aloud might bring on the death throes. No talk of wills, end-of-life care or funeral planning. Heck, we can’t even pen our autobiographies. At my memoir-writing workshop last year, one participant said his wife had tried to stop him from signing up because she believed writing your life story meant you were ready to give up the ghost! Which makes All Death Matters an unusual… Read More

Shubeik Lubeik

by

By Caitlin Plovnick Content warning: violence, suicidal thoughts, discrimination Shubeik Lubeik (“your wish is my command”) is a clever and moving three-part fantasy set in a world where genie-granted wishes are a regulated resource. Mainly taking place in modern day Cairo, Shubeik Lubeik is rich with background details that show evidence of cheap wishes gone wrong, often in the form of mutations, or tacky materialistic wishes for the wealthy, such as flying cars and dinosaurs. The story follows three individuals who have the opportunity to make a 1st-class wish: the rarest, most expensive and most reliable type of wish available…. Read More

Dying for Attention

by

by Ameena Batada   Susan MacLeod’s Dying for Attention: A Graphic Memoir of Nursing Home Care takes readers on a personal-professional odyssey that only someone with MacLeod’s combination of experience and expertise could know and share in this way. MacLeod, an artist since she was young, intertwines her personal family journey with professional knowledge about institutional public health and communication in this playful and comic memoir. MacLeod focuses on her challenges as the primary caregiver obtaining quality nursing home care for her mother in Canada, an increasingly common scenario for adults in the “sandwich” (between parents and children) generation. According… Read More

Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371

by

Guest review by Dr. Devlyn McCreight MK Czerwiec’s graphic memoir Taking Turns is one of the latest entries in the Graphic Medicine series published by Penn State University Press.  The book chronicles Czerwiec’s seven years serving as a nurse on the dedicated HIV/AIDS Care Unit at Illinois Masonic Hospital.  While it could be reasonably assumed that Czerwiec serves as the de facto “main character” of the story due to the autobiographical threads woven into the narrative, this does not actually seem to be the case.  The care that Czerwiec takes in gathering and sharing the stories of the doctors, nurses,… Read More