8. Part 1: What is it like to be ill?
Sample patient story (42yr-old woman, cancer)
“I have been hesitant to start. A little nervous, a little
unsure. But I think it is something that might help me.
Putting words to it. Giving it some form. Acknowledging
the vastness of it, the complexity, the dreadful black
blessing that it is . . .
9. Part 1: What is it like to be ill?
Sample patient story continued . . .
“. . . I don’t yet know, completely, abso-lutely, what it is to
have cancer. To write it out: I have cancer. But this is the
very thing I want. I want to tell it and deal with it and give it
a place, but I don’t want it to be the whole thing . . .”
10. What is it like to be ill?
Bob Boyer
A Smallpox Issue
11. What is it like to be ill?
Ottomar
Gassenmeyer
“Self portrait”
12. What is it like to be ill?
William Utermolen
“Self Portrait”