Kristina Fleuty // I have approached most of my posts for Synapsis during this academic year with a view to relating medical and health humanities topics in some way to veterans or the military experience. For my final post this year, I return to Harry Parker’s contemporary novel, Anatomy of a Soldier, aspects of which…
Author: Kristina
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'Books and Bodies in the Bloodstream' is my research-related professional website and the 'Slowly Climbing the Coconut Tree' blog is my main personal website.
Veterans, Transition and Bodily Identity
Kristina Fleuty // I wonder, does engaging in writing practices offer any health benefits specifically to the veteran population? Furthermore, if there is evidence of health benefits; does any of this evidence offer insight into how the individual comes to terms with their changing bodily and psychological identity during the transition process? I would like…
Metaphor, Medical Decisions and the Military Mindset
Kristina Fleuty // How would you describe what it is like to live with an injured and chronically painful limb? How would you communicate to a medical professional your reasoning for wanting the elective amputation of that limb? I have recently been pondering how people talk about their bodily experiences, both to their friends and…
Towards a Meditation on Pain
How do people talk about and understand lived experiences of pain? For the past year, I have immersed myself in the world of qualitative research into lived experiences of trauma, including in relation to amputation, a large part of which is the experience, management and understanding of pain. Some of this research has been motivated…
Do not read this book whilst eating: a review of Emergency Admissions by Kit Wharton
Kristina Fleuty // Working for the ambulance service is a job like no other. It is a career of contrasts; delivering emergency medical care requires quick thinking and calmness, and thrusts people into situations simultaneously tragic and comical; emergencies are unbelievable and removed from reality, yet they expose the minutiae of everyday life. In his…
Tears and rain. Finding a bird and a depressed place.
Credit: Skies above Lake Murray, S.C. Taken by Adam Cole. Retrieved from NPR.org. The first time I saw a parliament of rooks flocking in the early evening sky, I was studying for my Master’s degree. Let me explain. We found ourselves on the edge of a field with naturalist Mark Cocker, just as dusk was…
Breaking Through Trauma with Creative Writing and Bibliotherapy
What benefits might be found in writing about experiences of trauma? Alternatively, what might be the effect of reading about somebody else’s experiences? In my October and November posts, I explored aspects of the medical and rehabilitative object-human relationships in Harry Parker’s novel Anatomy of a Soldier. Although a work of fiction, Parker’s novel is semi-autobiographical….
Exploring the Human Side of Military Medicine Through Anthropomorphised Objects. Part Two.
What is it like to lose a limb and gain a prosthetic? How would you communicate to others this embodied experience and make sense of having to incorporate technology into your bodily identity? In October’s post, I introduced Harry Parker’s recent novel Anatomy of a Soldier, a semi-autobiographical account of limb loss and prosthetic gain….
Exploring the Human Side of Military Medicine Through Anthropomorphised Objects. Part One.
Figure One. On display in the photograph are examples of modern prosthetic legs. Taken with permission at the National Army Museum, London. Have you ever wondered what it is like to be an object involved in the treatment of an injured soldier? In Harry Parker’s recent novel, Anatomy of a Soldier, he tells the story…