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This Week in Graphic Medicine (1/12/18)

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This Week in Graphic Medicine in a Stranger Things Stylized Font

‘This Week in Graphic Medicine’ highlights relevant articles (and tweets) about comics in medicine published during the week (Saturday – Friday). Links are typically presented without commentary, unless clarification of relevance is necessary, with credit given to those who flagged them up where possible. So without further ado…

Matthew’s Pick of the Week…

Traditionally speaking, I have tried to avoid indulging in my personal views in these posts each week, making it clear on those occasions that I don’t. However, thinking about how much time goes into each week’s work, I thought I would try something new – highlight my favorite, relevant part of each week’s roundup. This will provide a chance to highlight amazing work being done and, hopefully, provide a little more context to a link that might otherwise be overlooked in the slew of amazing work.

Some background… As you may or may not think about, graphic medicine is ultimately rooted in the same ideas as narrative medicine, that is, that medicine is rooted in storytelling and that those stories are vital to humanistic medical practice. If you were to build a hierarchy,  you might place graphic medicine in a bucket under narrative medicine, alongside poetry, prose writing, music, and so on, as one option of many. Each of those ways of interacting with the stories of health are unique, bring something to the table the others cannot, and as such all have a role to play – even if we like to think we’re the best!

It is with this in mind, that for this first time, I am  stepping outside of the comics box a bit. Earlier in the week I decided to share a little of how I have learned to process my experience living with chronic pain on Twitter, even ending with a small visualization at the end of the thread. In a strange coincidence, an Opinion piece in the New York Times, titled In My Chronic Illness, I Found a Deeper Meaning was published around the same time. This essay is my pick of the week.

Elliot frames the experience of chronic illness – in its multifaceted forms – as a failure of society, of economics, and of empathy. Society fails the chronically ill by refusing to accept the experience as anything but abnormal and something to be feared. Something to be rejected. Something to be, at all costs, fixed. Our economic systems fail the chronically ill through its outright refusal to accept anything other than “productivity” holds value. Elliot puts it perfectly:

Being sick has been a long, slow detox from capitalist culture and its mandate that we never rest. Slowly, I found a deeper value in relationship beyond reciprocity: an unconditional love and care based in justice, and a belief that all humans deserve relationship, regardless of whether we can offer anything measurable back.

The failure of empathy toward the chronically ill can’t be pointed to quite so directly and is intimately connected to the failures of society and economics. Empathy – the ability to understand and share the feelings of another – is difficult and, perhaps, sorely lacking from our world. You might argue that it is impossible to truly understand the feelings of another, especially if their life experiences are far removed from your own. But that would be a mistake. Even if you can never, with pinpoint accuracy, understand someone, that is hardly an excuse to not try. To not listen. To not open yourself up to the possibility that the most important thing you can do for someone struggling is to listen without judgment and for listening’s sake.

This last failure – of empathy – is why I have dove into narrative and graphic medicine. As individuals, there is little we can do to (quickly) change society at large or the economics of our country, but we can learn – and teach – others to be more empathetic. That’s a laudable goal for everyone, but I would say it is an absolute requirement for us in medicine. I’ll end this week with Elliot’s final thoughts, in the hopes that they speak to you as they did to me:

This is merely another chapter in the life of my body. If I’m lucky enough to get old, my body will change again … This is not a tragedy. This is what it means to be human.

Comics and Medicine: The Way We Work

The Center for Cartoon Studies has launched its page for the 2018 Graphic Medicine Conference! Here you’ll find logistical information – dates and some basic travel information – as well as confirmed keynote speakers. You will also find the call-for-papers information – proposals are due January 30th, 2018. Keep your eyes open for more information as it arrives!

Articles & More… 

Award: CSS Prizes 2017

CFP: Graphic Justice Discussions 2018

CFP: CFP: Comics and Medicine: The Ways We Work (August 16-18, 2018, Vermont)

Webcomic: Now and Then via @Eliza_Coli

Webcomic: Needles…

Webcomic: Transfusion Toons: DAT

Webcomic: Maternity Scare via @TheNib

Webcomic: A Part of Me is Still Unknown via @TheNib

Webcomic: The Good War via @TheNib

Webcomic: America Isn’t Ready For a Pandemic. Here’s How It Could Happen. via @TheNib

Webcomic: Board Gaming the System: A Comic Series Part 4

Scholarly: A Narrative Approach to Authorship: The Work of Evi Tampold from Her Mother/Publisher’s (and Her Own) Perspective

Interview: Cartooncology: An Interview with Will Sperduto

Video: Graphic Medicine YouTube Playlist

Book Review: The Senses

Book Review: Rosa Y Javier via @GraficaMedicina

Blog: A few notes on falling

A Look at First Second’s Fall 2018 Covers

Reading Well for Chronic Pain

This USC physicist wants you to talk about science. His new graphic novel can get you started

Coming-out Narratives in Comics

Tweets…

Some great stuff this week! Did I miss something? Let me know in the comments below or tweet @NoetheMatt! Until next time…

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