Type of Submission: Health Story

Allyson Felix es campeona de la salud materna

Allyson Felix is an Olympic athlete who experienced complications with her pregnancy. She prepared for her pregnancy, exercising and trying to take every precaution. However, on a routine check-up, she was informed she had grave preeclampsia. Frightened and confused, Felix learned black women were at a higher risk for these complications. Felix received quality care and recovered from the disease, but wants all pregnant women to be aware of this risk. This is a quick read of about 10 minutes for intermediate level Spanish readers. The Q & A interview format help with comprehension. Readily usable in a medical Spanish class to expose students to health disparities (risk factors, access to care, outcomes) or in a mid-level composition, conversation or health narratives course.

Columna de Adictos y adicciones: Mi experiencia en un grupo de doce pasos

This 5 page newspaper article (about a 15 minute read for advanced Spanish speakers; more for lower levels) is a transcript of an addict’s story as told to a Narcotics Anonymous group. Jose Antonio says that he was trapped by a “circle of death” and describes how addiction is a disease that isolates the addict from the world. NA teaches him the difference between religion and spirituality and he explains how this insight was important to his sobriety. Useful for insights into 12-step programs and their approach to addiction, perhaps best for a community group discussion.

Familia conoce a mujer que recibió corazón de hija con VIH

Shaffrey describes the life of a woman, Brittany Newton, who suffered from a heroin addiction and died when she was 30 years old. She was also HIV-positive–for many years, doctors have transplanted organs from one HIV-positive person to another. This happened in the case of Brittany’s donated heart, and Brittany’s family was able to hear her heart beating in Maria’s, the transplant recipient’s, chest. 5 minute read, appropriate for upper intermediate Spanish learners.

La historia de Bill

This CDC-based cautionary tale about the dangers of smoking involves a Michigan man who was diagnosed with diabetes as a child. It stresses how angry Bill is to have accepted the first cigarette as a teenager, given the complications for diabetes caused by smoking. At 37, he lost sight in his left eye and later had kidney failure. Two years later his leg was amputated due to poor circulation, which motivated him to quit smoking. He nonetheless died of cardiac disease at age 42. A 5-7 minute read for intermediate level Spanish speakers – written in simple past tenses – it leans heavily into the cautionary tale of not smoking. It also gives vivid details of how much worse smoking is for diabetics, giving a starting point for discussion of both smoking and diabetes. Usable in mid-level medical Spanish courses, composition or conversation; stylistically might not be very compelling as a health narrative.

The CDC website where this written narrative is posted also offers an English translation and biography of Bill.

Maldita Depresion

This poem (~30 lines) describes depression from the inside, emphasizing the writer’s frustration that her depression is impacting her writing. She describes her feelings by saying that the world is cold, but she doesn’t have a coat. She wants to feel the world’s beauty, but she doesn’t see any heart or soul in the world around her. She finishes the poem wondering if she will wake up tomorrow. The poem is constructed around concrete imagery that makes it accessible to intermediate Spanish readers and above. It could be a useful writing prompt or discussion starter in poetry, composition or conversation courses, as well as storytelling groups or workshops.

“A lifespan the length of a dog’s”: Illness as loss in the novel So Much for That

“The clinic and the person” is a podcast series that follows Russell Teagarden’s blog “According to the Arts,” in which he juxtaposes clinical descriptions of illness and disability with literary texts about characters who live with those conditions. In the podcast, he and another medical professional discuss the condition that is the focus of each episode based on their medical experience, and react to the literary text as attentive, sensitive readers. This episode based on the novel, So Much for That, brings discussion of various ways catastrophic illness puts an end to a family’s plans: economically, physically, socially. The website describes the goal of the series as: “developed to summon or quicken the attention of health care professionals, their educators, researchers and others to the interests and plights of people with specific health problems aided through knowledge and perspectives the humanities provide. … The Clinic represents all that Biomedicine brings to bear on disease processes and treatment protocols, and The Person, represents all that people experience from health problems. Our episodes draw from works in the humanities–any genres that relate directly to how people are affected by specific clinical events such as migraine headaches, epileptic seizures, and dementia, and by specific health care situations such as restricted access to care and gut-wrenching, life and death choices. We analyze and interpret featured works and provide thoughts on how they apply in patient care and support; health professions education; clinical and population research; health care policy; and social and cultural influences and reactions.”

Extreme Measures: Finding a Better Path to the End of Life.

A critical care/palliative care specialist describes hard cases at the end of life, admitting times when she has been unclear about how to advise families making difficult decisions about taking loved ones off of what she describes as the “end of life conveyor belt” of extreme measures seen in emergency rooms. From NYT book review: “Medical training fosters a heroic model of saving lives at any cost. American can-do optimism assumes all problems can and should be solved. Both doctors and patients tend to subscribe to a ‘more is better’ philosophy. If technology exists, surely it should be used. Physicians’ fears of litigation plays a part, as do patients’ fantasies of perpetual life. For too many, death remains unthinkable and unspeakable.” A 25-minute documentary that features her and shows some of these kinds of conversations is available on Netflix (“Extremis,” 2016)

Extremis

25 minute documentary filmed in a hospital that shows patients, families and health care professionals (Dr. Jessica Zitter, pulmonary/ER specialist and palliative care, is featured. See her book Extreme Measures: Finding a Better Path to the End of Life”) dealing with end of life moments. Talking through concrete decisions of whether to take a loved one off a ventilator in the same room where the patient lies captures the difficulty of those decisions in agonizing detail. Short enough to show in a class, might be too intense for many audiences (maybe to stimulate discussion among pre-med or medical students). Could be used with a reading like “Letting go,” by Atul Gawande, but content warnings are essential. Academy Award nominee.

Honoring the Stories of Illness

In this TedX presentation in Atlanta, Dr. Charon describes her practice of narrative medicine and the connections between close reading of a text and paying close attention to what her patients tell her in clinical practice. She describes how she interacts with patients and receives their stories and the ways in which this builds an affilitation that is the foundation for care. I have assigned this video as an introduction to narrative medicine (often in conjunction with one or more readings by Charon about narrative medicine). The video is 18 minutes long so it can also be shown in class to provide a shared reference for discussion.

Mi vida con Sida: La historia de Carolina

Details a young Chilean woman’s experience with AIDS. Her first symptoms were a severe pneumonia and first diagnosis was depression; finally tested positive for AIDS. Details both the stigma of having AIDS and the often supportive reactions from family members. Chilean dialect features may make this otherwise brief, accessible story a stretch for non-native speakers before upper intermediate level. Good example to discuss stigmatized health conditions, misdiagnosis, dealing with family members’ reactions.