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Paintings and reflections that share a nurse's personal experience of illness In the summer of 2013, Cortney Davis, a nurse practitioner and author who often writes about her interactions with patients, underwent routine one-day surgery. A surgical mishap led to a series of life-altering and life-threatening complications, resulting in two prolonged hospital stays and a lengthy recovery. During twenty-six days in the hospital, Davis experienced how suddenly a caregiver can become a care receiver and what it's like to be "on the other side of the sickbed." As a nurse, she was accustomed to suffering and to the empathy such witnessing can evoke, but as a patient she learned new and transforming lessons in pain, fear, loneliness, abandonment, and dependency; in the fragility of health and life; in the necessity of family support; and, ultimately, in the importance of gratitude. Once at home, Davis wanted to respond to her illness creatively through her writing, but the details seemed too intense, too raw for words. As her recovery progressed, she found release in painting, discovering an immediate connection between heart and hand, between memory and canvas. In a series of twelve paintings, she reenvisioned episodes of her illness, moments that remained and replayed in her consciousness, ultimately providing an education in health care more resonant and more authentic than what she had found in nursing textbooks. Before, serving as a nurse in intensive care, oncology, and women's health, Davis believed that she understood what hospitalized patients might be experiencing and how they might be coping. Her own illness taught her how little she truly knew and how important it is that all caregivers--professionals and family members alike--become aware of the physical and the inner emotional needs of their seriously ill patients. After the twelve paintings were completed, Davis wrote brief commentaries for each image. She used her remembrances to clarify and expand on her artwork, thereby making her personal story accessible to others. While every patient's journey and every caregiver's challenges are unique, these intimate and revealing paintings and reflections offer a glimpse into the universal aspects of illness and recovery.

Brings together Nathaniel Hawthorne's and Edgar Allan Poe's doctor-scientist tales along with thought provoking introductions and discussion questions. The doctor-scientist stories collected in Mysterious Medicine provide evidence that the arts and humanities offer unique ways to explore the social, cultural, political, and personal forces that affect the way we suffer and heal.

Some of the world's greatest literature is devoted to expressing the joys and sorrows humans experience as they grow old. New opportunities and challenges appear: retirement, a special closeness with the family, failing health, the recognition of personal mortality. This collection of short stories, poems, and plays addresses these issues.

A study of the experiences of those who live outside social norms for beauty, size and shape, as well as the reactions of ""normal"" people to those who appear grotesque. The text contains essays on treating those with disorders or deformities, and over 40 stories, poems and plays about abnormality.

Those who teach the literature of medicine have questioned why there appears to be a lack of rich materials connecting nursing with the humanities. Tenderly Life Me is a compassionate and complex combination of biography, photography, and poetry that gives nurses a voice.

Presents a series of clinically based essays that aim to give voice to a variety of people who, faced with difficult moral choices, and find themselves making disturbing self-discoveries.

Places the voices of women experiencing illness alongside analytical writing from prominent scholars in the field of narrative medicine. This work bridges the artificial divide between women's lives and scholarship in gender, health, and medicine. It draws the connection between women's suffering and advocacy for women's lives.

Assembles plays that demonstrate how theatrical form can open discussion linking medicine to the larger society. The author includes essays to each of the works as well as a general introduction that presents an overview of the issues discussed in the anthology, and their relevance to our culture, and their value in providing thematic material.

What is it like to be a student nurse washing the feet of a dying patient? To be a newly graduated nurse, in charge of the Intensive Care Unit for the first time, who wonders if her mistake might have cost a life? This book reveals a glimpse into the minds and hearts of those who care for us when we are at our most vulnerable.