| January/February 2009
(Michelle Mayer, Aisha Saad, our 10th anniversary year)
- When Michelle Mayer wrote her September/October 2008 Narrative Matters essay, “On Being a ‘Difficult’ Patient,” she was already extremely ill. Sadly, Michelle died on October 11.
Later in that month, Susan Dentzer, editor-in-chief of Health Affairs, wrote eulogies for three important people—one of whom was Michelle— whom the worlds of U.S. and global health had lost in October. “Their lives, she wrote, “underscore the importance of improving health and health care worldwide—and the many ways there are to leave a legacy behind.” Susan’s blog post contains a link to Michelle Mayer’s blog, Diary of a Dying Mom, where you can read Michelle’s final thoughts.
It says much about Michelle that as she neared the end of her life, she wrote not to rail against her imminent death but to tackle a wider patient topic in her Narrative Matters essay. In her essay and her life, Michelle taught us to look illness squarely in the face, as well as how to continue life’s important conversations until the very end.
- Narrative Matters author Aisha Saad has been named a 2009 Rhodes Scholar. Currently a senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Aisha is the only undergraduate (to date) to have had a Narrative Matters essay published. Aisha’s essay, “Elevators, Falafel, and Thalassemia,” appeared in the July/August 2007 issue of Health Affairs. For more information, including her bio and study plans at the University of Oxford, see http://www.wral.com/news/local/noteworthy/story/4014355/.
- It’s Narrative Matters’ 10th anniversary year, as the section debuted in the July/August 1999 issue of Health Affairs. We’ll be celebrating Narrative Matters’ landmark anniversary in the July/August 2009 issue of the journal, and in various ways throughout 2009.
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