BOOK REVIEWTHE WOUNDED STORYTELLER

BY ARTHUR W. FRANK

By Tim Tran

What’s it about?

Spectrum of illness

Patients who have illness have stories to be told

These are important

Define who they are

Attempts to analyse this in a series of

sociological/personal theories of classification

REMISSION SOCIETY

Sontag’s metaphor: remission society

Illness vs. health

Dual citizenship

Visa status – constant periodic renewal

People who would have been dead to enjoy the

living world but always subject to expulsion

“Fear comes and goes as a breast cancer survivor,

but twice a year, at check up time it’s ferocious”

Lack of permanent citizenship

Frank believes we belittle the diversity of suffering

by reducing it to a unifying general view

Sufferers suspicious of this ‘medical reduction’

“When admitted to hospital or visiting a doctor, we

stop being people and start being patients. We

relinquish our identity as people who live in their

hospitals”.

Reconstructive surgery to face – article doesn’t

mention name although pictures of patient shown

They need us but they don’t acknowledge that

In post modern times pressures on clinical

practice, including cost of physician’s time, greater

use of technologies, mean less time for patients to

speak

People still need their specific professionals, but

professions as a group are regarded with increasing

cynicism

Author sounds bitter and angry

One of our most difficult duties as human beings is

to listen to the voices of those who suffer

Ill voices are easy to ignore because they are often

faltering in tone and mixed in message

These voices bespeak conditions of embodiment

that most of us would rather forget as it reveals our

own vulnerability

REVIEW

Tries to identify people with illness have stories that

need to be told, but that doctors do not hear or want to

hear

Thick veil of sociological jargon and excess literacy that

makes this difficult to read but easy to publish

Professional in sociology venturing into medicine/illness

trying to quantify/qualitative analysis of sickness

Tries to take back perceived ownership of the

illness experience from professionals

Tries to express medicine posing it’s own language

on people, but then imposes own sociological

language

Condescending/confrontational, but maybe not

everyone else has such a benevolent approach

Maybe seeing the patient’s perspective doesn’t

come easy to all doctors

Maybe he’s just a wounded patient?

Later divulges his diagnosis of testicular cancer

successfully treated

Different slant from this viewpoint

But does this give him the right to take ownership

of advocacy?

Author seems to have had turbulent contact with

medical professionals – sounds bitter sometimes

considering limited resources/time to treat the many

at the expense of treatment to individuals

Ideal is to have unlimited time and resources to

give individual patients maximally optimised care.

Not always possible

My thesis is that different bodies have “elective

affinities” to different illness narratives

Theories don’t stand up next to real stories

Very occasionally Frank includes illness stories

Desire

Pt dying of leukaemia “maybe at sixty it’s a good

time to bow out”

Lacking desire

Why buy shoes? Why have dental work done?

Diagnostic shock…….to living with cancer

Taking up tap dancing lessons as something he

always wanted to do, but also to keep falling out of

love with yourself as illness attempts to diminish or

disfigure you

It is not dying we fear, but the diminished self

Trying to demonstrate a principle called the

‘disciplined body’

Pt with breast cancer “relief” finally being

punished and paying price for being bad mother

Feels she deserves this

Self pride

Returns to work soon after mastectomy

Recurrence undergoes chemotherapy

Makes informed decision to stop chemotherapy sooner than

advised

Despite medical pressure, accepts advice and makes her own

decision

She makes peace with her aging body

Far from interpreting as punishment sees her experience has made

her more of a person for having survived

Humbling passage about a person’s journey with cancer

And all these people in pain…all these people with aches and all

these people suffering. We walk in different dimensions. We have

access to different experiences, different knowledges. And there are

so many of us too. We could help the normals and whitecoats both.

We could help them see that they’re wasting the precious moments

of their lives. Sick people know what health is. They know it by it’s

very loss….

Live as if it really mattered, don’t waste precious moments

None of the theories are evidence based

Author’s perogative?

Who is intended audience? Other sociologists? Not

patients not doctors

Would I recommend this book?