A Conversation: Humanizing the Encounter Between Physician and Patient Through Journalized Poetry

Abstract

This piece of journalized poetry is an ongoing conversation between a psychologist/patient (JJM), who underwent a bone marrow transplant for cancer, and a marrow transplant physician (JG-P). The dialogue never in fact took place. Rather, it takes the form of extracts from JJM's journal, and commentary by JG-P as counterpoint, on issues both momentous and mundane that together make up the ordeal of this hazardous treatment. It is an attempt to draw clinician and client closer to each other's understanding and experience, through the subjective voice of each.