“To Break into Pieces” – Puncturing and Preserving the Feminine Self in Leila Chatti’s Deluge (2020) The medical root “-rrhagia” at the end of a term signifies an urgent and abnormal rupture accompanied by a shocking burst of liquid, as in hemorrhage (blood loss from a damaged vessel), menorrhagia (excessive menstrual bleeding), or metrorrhagia…
Tag: Diagnosis
Jane Austen’s Autopsies
I confess I have not watched the much-maligned adaptation of Persuasion that dropped on Netflix yesterday. But wait, there’s more: I have never read Persuasion. I know. I know. Just as soon as I am finished here, I will slam this laptop closed in trepidation and shame and await the revocation of my English PhD….
Rethinking the Language of Cancer Diagnosis
Steffi Mac // Recently, I was introduced to a young doctor who had survived cancer and who is now working on Covid-19 duty. I wanted to interview her in order to present her narrative in my online initiative for cancer survivors, The Marrow Story. I was also trying to understand the health care system of…
Diagnosis: What’s Wrong with Us
Sneha Mantri // Netflix’s newest original series, Diagnosis, dropped on August 16, 2019. Each of the seven episodes is touted as a “medical mystery” to be solved through crowdsourcing. The concept is intriguing: harness the global reach of the internet to connect patients, families, and physicians, all working in concert to solve a complex case….
Pain without Cause
Diana Rose Newby // …if the only external sign of the felt-experience of pain (for which there is no alteration in the blood count, no shadow on the X ray, no pattern on the CAT scan) is the patient’s verbal report (however itself inadequate), then to bypass the voice is to bypass the bodily event,…
What’s Culture Got To Do With It? Reading Jason Schnittker’s “The Diagnostic System”
Abigail Jane Mack // In the past year, the diagnosis of mental illness has loomed large in US political debates about gun control and healthcare. We’ve seen the continued growth of individuals with mental disorders identified in the US prison and jail system. We’ve seen public commenters diagnose the president and celebrities from afar. At…
Lisa Halliday’s “Asymmetry”: A Misreading
Anna Fenton-Hathaway Despite its title, Asymmetry comprises two seemingly unrelated sections of equal length, appended by a slim and quietly shocking coda. – Alice Gregory, New York Times review (2018) Gregory’s phrase “shocking coda”—and her “seemingly,” I suppose—has ruined me for this book. I am reading like a doctor.