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The Patient's Voice: Experiences of Illness, Second Edition
F.A. Davis | English | 2016 | ISBN-10: 0803658656 | 260 pages | PDF | 14.74 mb
By Dr Jeanine Young-Mason

From the book
B ecause the power of death yields in some of us such a longevity of grief, it is surely
appropriate to include it among chronicles of illness. Indeed, grief, on a personal and
collective scale , may be the most all-consuming, inescapable, and indecipherable of
all illnesses suffered by humanity. I learned as a child of 7 at my father's death that
grief is shared with others and others' tears can drown out one's own to the point
where one can't hear oneself or be heard. We are made suddenly fearful. And for those
of us who view death as a tragedy, whether we laugh at it like the Irish of old or qui­
etly weep like the ancient Mesopotamians with their distended eyes, it causes terror,
such that only very gradually over time, over years , are we brought to rise up in frail
but humanly heroic defiance of death's power. Before heroism rises in us, this fear­
fulness results in some of the strangest, most bewildering behavior that human beings
are capable of, much of it rooted in our competitiveness , possessiveness, and capacity
for jealousy.

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