Who said, “Poetry is language writing itself out of a difficult situation?” I’m not sure. What does come to mind is the poem “Late Fragment” by Raymond Carver, who was a patient at the time. 

  “Learn the art of fragmented, irrational conversations and follow the patient’s lead instead of trying to control the dialogue.” – Zen and the Art of Coping With Alzheimer’s Denise Grady, New York Times (August 14, 2007) Recently a colleague e-mailed me the link to Jane Brody’s New York Time’s article Alzheimer’s Patients Keep The […]

  In a recent KevinMD blog the term “doctor’s emotional switch,” was used by Dr. Mark Abrams to describe the protective coping mechanism ingrained in medical training to objectify their patients and thereby maintain emotional distance. He notes that this approach can have both positive and negative effects. 

THE SCENT OF WORDS “In illness words give out their scent… if at last we grasp the meaning, it is all richer for having come to us…” Virginia Woolf On Being Ill (1930)

One of the things I’ve heard many patients speak about is how their diagnosis resulted in what felt like an identity crisis—it seemed to change “who they were” nearly instantly, and in a very fundamental way.