#DrawingTogetherGM 10: The Politics of Illness

Here is what I drew for this week's Graphic Medicine Drawing Together session. The prompt we were given this time was "Care as an urgent practical task". It was not an easy prompt, but we only had 15 minutes to draw so I went with what came immediately to mind.

When it was my turn to share what I'd drawn with the group, I asked them first to look without my saying anything. I wanted them to have an unguided response. Then I mentioned that this was a representation of me and my mother last year near the end of her illness. From my point of view, we were desperately trying to get her to eat, and (one time only) I tried to do a deal with her pain meds. I remember having a sudden flashback to feeding my baby sister many years earlier. She would sit in her high-chair in the exact same spot in the kitchen where my mother was sitting in that moment, and it felt to me like a similar situation, i.e., trying to get her to eat. It was just that instead of "one for you, one for me", or "here comes the airplane in for a landing!" it was "I will swap you a pill for a mouthful of soup."

It took me a while to understand that as her ability to be independent was being drained by the lymphoma, my mother sought any way she could to take some control of her life. And the one thing she had left was food. So when we said please, she said no. I get it now, but it was tough at the time. The fact that she was fighting was actually positive. And it is easier to see from here that while I truly wanted to alleviate her suffering, I  must admit that part of me did not want to feel it either. 

It's not something I ever really thought about before my mother got sick. I've rarely questioned the concept that medicine is something to help you get better. A simple perspective, I know. In a world where things are now rather more complicated. And so, looking at the drawing that I did, seeing what came first to my mind, now I ask:  where is the boundary between numbing the pain so that the patient's suffering is alleviated, and numbing the patient so others are not overwhelmed by their inability to cure the ailment? And who gets to choose, and why?