Sweet Sand of Time: James Dickey’s poem Diabetes with Guest Dr. Jack Coulehan

11/27/22 • 55 min

We feature James Dickey’s poem, Diabetes, with our guest, the renowned physician-poet Dr. Jack Coulehan. We discuss insights the poem offers about the trajectory of type 2 diabetes from the time of symptom onset until the time a balance is achieved between maximum compliance with disease management requirements and the compromises an acceptable lifestyle can necessitate for many individuals. In addition to providing his perspectives on how the poem expands on the biomedical components of diabetes in recognizing effects such as fear, anxiety, frustration, and oppression, Dr. Coulehan recounts how he has used this poem and others in teaching medical students and residents. He also tells stories of particular instances in which he used poetry as part of the care he provided certain patients, and as a way to connect with them.
Links:

Dr. Jack Coulehan’s bio at Stonybrook University is here.

The poem, Diabetes, and the comparative biomedical text discussed can be seen here in Russell Teagarden’s blog, According to the Arts.

Dr. Coulehan’s poem, I’m Gonna Slap Those Doctors, which was central to one of the stories he told, can be accessed here. And, his poem, The Man with Stars Inside Him, which was central to another story he told, can be accessed here.

In this episode, we make a distinction between illness as the subjective perceptions of a health problem and disease as the pathological basis of a health problem. This distinction is explained in much greater depth here in According to the Arts.

The Literature, Arts and Medicine Database at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine, a great source for Humanities works related to disease, illness, and health care, is found here.
Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to [email protected].
Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts, or visit us at our website.

Executive producer: Anne Bentley

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Dr. Jack Coulehan’s bio at Stonybrook University is here.

The poem, Diabetes, and the comparative biomedical text discussed can be seen here in Russell Teagarden’s blog, According to the Arts.

Executive producer: Anne Bentley

Previous Episode

When the Bolt Touches Flesh: Living with Epileptic Seizures

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What can it be like to have epileptic seizures? We draw from four sources—a memoir, two novels, and a movie. In particular, we the cover how these sources depict convulsive seizure events as people may experience them, the physical and mental harm they can produce, and the adaptations to daily activities and life plans they motivate. We compare these renderings with a description from classic biomedical text, and offer thoughts on how they can expand the understanding of the ways epileptic seizures affect the lives of those who suffer from them, and reveal possibilities for better lives they could achieve.
Bibliographic information on featured episode sources:
Eichenwald K. A Mind Unraveled. New York, Ballantine Books, 2018.
Dostoevsky F. The Idiot. Oxford, Oxford World Classics, 1992.
Harding P. Tinkers. New York, Bellevue Literary Press. 2009.
Higgins B. Electricity. Stone City Films. 2014.
Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine, 21st ed, New York, McGraw Hill, 2022.

Additional text on the comparison between literary and biomedical text covering generalized tonic-clonic seizures, including a mapping of literary and biomedical texts for the different components of a seizure, is posted here at According to the Arts.
Other books to consider on the topic of how people experience epileptic seizures:
David B. Epileptic. New York, Pantheon Books, 2005. (graphic novel)
Fadiman A. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. New York, Farrar, Straus and Geroux, 1997. (nonfiction)
Send us comments, recommendations, and questions at: [email protected].
Executive producer: Anne Bentley
Subscribe to The Clinic & The Person at wherever you get your podcasts, or visit us at https://www.theclinicandtheperson.com.

Next Episode

Six Kopeks or Your Life: Two Short Stories about Health Care Professionalism and Access

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We draw from two short stories published long ago, but recently discovered, that help us discern whether current problems associated with professionalism in health care and access to health care are unique to our time, or whether they have always been with us in one form or another. One of the stories is Anton Chekhov’s At the Pharmacy, written in 1885 and found in the late 1990s, and the other story is Raymond Chandler’s It’s All Right – He Only Died, written in the late 1950s and found in 2017. A throughline from these stories led us to the classic, 1978 satirical novel, The House of God, by Samuel Shem. We consider its importance to health care professionalism at the time—including our own professional behavior—and whether its influence persists. We conclude musing about how the perspectives these sources offer can be used in modern-day health care.
Links:
See Russell Teagarden’s blog postings at According to the Arts for further analysis of the short stories featured in this podcast, At the Pharmacy (Chekhov) and It’s All Right – He Only Died (Chandler).
At the Pharmacy is included in the anthology, The Undiscovered Chekhov: Thirty-Eight New Stories, as is the story of how the translator, Peter Constantine, found these unpublished works more than a century after they were written. An online version of At the Pharmacy is published in the weekly newsletter, Falltide.
It’s All Right – He Only Died, was published in The Strand Magazine, along with the story of its discovery sixty years after it was first written.
The version of The House of God we referenced in the podcast is the Berkley trade paperback edition, 2010.
After the podcast was released, the New York Times published an investigative report concerning the operation of the New York University emergency department on December 22, 2022 indicating that what Chandler described in his short story is still in practice. And a Kaiser Family Foundation report published on December 21, 2022 concerning the policies and practices many individual hospitals apply in collecting money their patients owe them shows how the issues raised in Chekhov's story still exist.
Also:
Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to: [email protected].
Thanks for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts, or visit us at https://www.theclinicandtheperson.com.