Sue Wootton
Consider the term ‘medical science’. Easy. For most of us it conjures laboratories, test-tubes, scientists in white coats, evidence-based research, miracle medical breakthroughs. Medical science trips off the tongue so naturally – it’s surely one word, not two. The bond between ‘medical’ and ‘science’ is super-glued. It’s solid and unbreakable. We’ve closed the gap between these words, left no cracks to fall through. Medical science: a term to lean on, a term to trust.
Now consider the term ‘medical humanities’. Not so easy. Or so I surmise from the confused look on people’s faces when I tell them that the medical humanities are my field of research. It’s as if the words ‘medical’ and ‘humanities’ are unrelated strangers who need to be coaxed from separate, distant rooms and forced together for an awkward conversation where neither can quite understand the other’s language or point of view. What on earth would they talk about? What would be the point? What’s the use of the medical humanities? Where’s the miracle medical breakthrough in that research?
[Read more…] about Navigating the entangled and “infuriatingly intricate” world
My labour started at 8am but we waited eleven hours before going to the large Edwardian house that had been converted to a maternity hospital. Brian, my husband, dropped me off and I was taken to a room with four beds, three of which were already occupied. I was instructed to get undressed and into bed. Nobody in the room spoke and then I realised that the woman next to me was not sleeping but sobbing quietly. She pulled the covers over her head.
It’s a fine line – to exercise or not. Outside, the sun lowering, the bank of clouds dulling the light, the day almost over. Yet inside, where I’m working at the computer, such lethargy … I can hardly bear to think of moving. Just take the mountain bike and ride twenty minutes up the rail trail and back again, I tell myself. I coax myself the same way when I’m writing – just write for ten minutes – and then put down the pen to find forty minutes have passed. I remind myself it’s always thinking about it that’s the hardest.