“Koat phey khmaoch, châng moel’ (she is afraid of ghosts, so she wants to look), he said to me, not turning from his typing… The ward is not specialized in ghosts (there are other experts for those beings), yet doctors and nurses understood that patients might connect pain or a dream with a supernatural intervention…
Tag: health care
“Who I used to be”: Chronic Pain, Identity Paralysis, and Forging a New Sense of Self
“I miss who I used to be,” she says softly. We sit for a moment, both considering the limitations of life lived with chronic pain and the sense of self felt left behind. She pauses for a moment, perhaps to consider the climate of this space – another clinic, another doctor, another evaluation, another day…
Let’s Talk About Sex: ‘90s Nostalgia, Hip-Hop, and Creating a Safe Space in Clinical Care
A few weeks ago, I cared for a young woman who came in to get an IUD check and be screened for sexually transmitted infections. She sat on the exam table, squeezing the vinyl covering between her fingers and palms, crossing her legs at the ankles. Her lashes were long and fake, curled up like…
Under the Surface
I’ve only seen it a few times. I don’t mean when you pass someone at the grocery store, their head covered in a silk turban, pale skin, no eyebrows. I mean at close range—when it’s beyond repair. The first time was ten years ago, an older Taiwanese woman brought in by her concerned daughter. In…
Ixcanul (2015) and the Precarity of Health Care in Iximulew (Guatemala)
Tiffany D. Creegan Miller, PhD // Ixcanul (Jayro Bustamante, 2015) is a film about a young Kaqchikel girl who lives with her parents in a humble shack on the edge of a coffee plantation on the slopes of a volcano where she and her father work during harvest seasons. The film was made in close…