The Stories of Patients

 medical narratives

The 25 essays in Bodies of Truth are by people who live with a chronic illness or disability. It was published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2019. Because most of the writers are patients, it’s a good companion to Where It Hurts, a collection of essays written by doctors, nurses, and other health care workers that was published by Intima Journal in 2026.

Quite a few topics are covered – living with Type 1 diabetes, a person with cancer in prison who decides not to seek treatment, the prejudice by some medical people against a deaf person wanting to give birth to deaf children, depression in a psychiatric facility, multiple sclerosis, trying to help a mentally challenged son, coping with PTSD, drug addiction, HIV, food allergies and the pharmaceutical politics of medical care, cerebral palsy, and more.

Even if we don’t know anyone who is living with these situations, and because not everyone tells us about their health struggles, this book helps us understand how our friends and neighbors feel having to live with these limitations – the difficulties and challenges, the despair and disappointments that sometimes overwhelm them, and living with the dread of your condition getting worse.

Essays by several of my favorite authors are included – Brian Doyle writes about his son who was born with a defective heart, had to undergo two major surgeries by the time he was three years old, and the uneasy truce Brian makes with God about this.

Sonya Huber, author of Pain Woman Takes Your Keys, details the pain of living with rheumatoid arthritis, and wonders what it would be like to go through one day without pain.

Floyd Skloot on how hard it is to function in life with a brain that was damaged by a virus, and having to go through tests to prove his disability to the insurance company.

William Bradley explores his struggles with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and reflects on the blue tattoo dots that remain in his skin that once guided radiation treatments, the scars from lymph node biopsies and other surgeries, and remembers when his skin burned and cracked from the treatments. He resolves to make his life count for something.

Every essay in the book is poignant, but several touched me deeply: Diane Kraynak writes of the anguish she went through as a pediatric nurse who was unable to save a newborn with a kidney problem after trying for six weeks to find something that would work.

As her husband was dying of lung cancer, Meredith Davies Hadaway discovered that Eric Satie’s “Gymnopédies” calmed his anxiety. After his death, she pays it forward in his honor by taking her harp into medical settings to help other patients through music therapy. 

Belinda Waller-Peterson speaks of the importance of listening to the stories of those who are ill because this helps them reclaim some control over their situation, and she details her mother’s struggle with bronchitis, asthma, and how perfumes made it difficult for her to breathe. It’s a real problem for quite a few people. Belinda also speaks of her mother’s workplace boss who fails to protect her health from environmental contaminants. 

Madaline Harrison is a neurologist. She shares stories of her training, observes how good doctors take care of their patients, learns to treat a wide variety of diseases, and talks about hospital protocols and the growing economic bureaucracy that wants to limit the time that doctors spend getting to know their patients as people. 

A physical disability does not affect our intelligence, although it may make it harder to share our knowledge and wisdom.

© 2026 Mark Liebenow