Projects So That I Can Say More

Projects So That I Can Say More are initiatives I undertake to gain deeper insights into particular disease and illness situations. These generally involve analyses that are developed from many sources relevant to a particular inquiry. For example, an analysis could compare and contrast the different ways in which the experience of dementia is rendered in literary fiction, the different ways the aura of migraine is rendered in paintings, the different ways anxiety has been conceptualized socially over the centuries.

An MRI Literary Image of a Guilty Conscience

According to the art: A passage is excerpted from the novel, Nervous System, in which a character’s conscience is generated during an MRI scan.

Tourette Syndrome:
The Biomedical and The Literary

Projects So That I Can Say More

According to the art: Here I compare biomedical and literary text describing Tourette syndrome. The biomedical text from a neurology journal describes the characteristic tics and behaviors while the literary text from a Jonathan Lethem novel more vividly describes signs and symptoms, and describes how Tourette syndrome can affect lives.

How The Plague Spreads:
The Biomedical and The Literary

Projects So That I Can Say More

According to the art: I juxtapose a compressed biomedical explanation of how the plague spreads from a prominent medical journal with excerpts from O’Farrell’s novel where she describes how the plague reached and infected her two young characters.

Reading Rats, Lice and History During the 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic…for Pleasure

Projects So That I Can Say More

According to the art: This is a book to read for the charm, eloquence, erudition, humility, and humor it provides as much or more than the history of typhus covered.

Emphysema:
The Biomedical and the Sick Poet

Projects So That I Can Say More

According to the art: Here, I compare a description of what people experience with emphysema from a classic biomedical text with a series of “notes” from a poet describing his experience with emphysema.

Migraine Experience:
The Biomedical and The Literary

Projects So That I Can Say More

According to the art: The experience of migraine headache is searing, its causes vexing, and its treatments unsatisfying. The condition is highly prevalent and writers, poets, and artists have rendered the experience across the millennia of civilization. Here is a comparison of some literary renderings of the migraine experience (fiction and nonfiction) with a classic biomedical text description.

Reading The End of October
During the Pandemic of 2020

Projects So That I Can Say More

This novel, written immediately before the current pandemic, offers correspondences between a literary account with fictional analogs to figures responding to the current pandemic, adding a measure of foresight to the many previous literary depictions of human responses to plagues.

Reading The Betrothed
During the 2020 Pandemic

Projects So That I Can Say More

According to the art: The Betrothed, by Alessandro Manzoni, is a literary explication of Italian history in the early sixteen hundreds, and which includes a section on the bubonic plague that ravaged Milan then. The factual reports of public reactions to the bubonic plague in the novel are compared here to factual reports of public reactions to the 2020 coronavirus pandemic in mainstream media. Not a lot changed in 400 years.

Diabetes Experience:
The Biomedical and The Poetic

Projects So That I Can Say More

According to the art: Here is a poem that renders the initial experience of type II diabetes compared to a biomedical explanation, and how people make accommodations to biomedical necessities.

Familial Dysautonomia Experience:
The Biomedical and The Literary

Projects So That I Can Say More

According to the art: Here are excerpts from the novel So Much For That, extending or elaborating on classic biomedical explanations of what people experience with familial dysautonomia.

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