Monday 15 April 2013

Margins, B-cells behaving badly, and a wee dance

Interesting post  - and discussion - on medical humanities and literary medicine from the Centre for Medical Humanities Blog. And a wee reminder that I'm reading extracts from The State of Me at Dissecting Edinburgh event  'Writing Medicine'  on 2 May. I  often say I live on  the margins of the writing life, I can't run around promoting my book, so it's lovely to be joining the mainstream for an hour or two. Is the first time I've read from the novel since 2008. Tickets free, though I'm told there are not many left. The reading will take place in the fascinating pathology museum in Surgeons' Hall.

Is ME all down to B-cells behaving badly? Rituximab research of Norwegian doctors Mella and Fluge reported in Discover Magazine. Good article, but the oft-used photo of a model in crisp white shirt looking like she has a bit of a headache to represent neuroimmune illness is beyond annoying.

Very encouraging to see Norfolk and Suffolk standing up for the neuroimmune model, they are pushing for CFS and ME to be treated separately, and advocate a biomedically driven, consultant-led clinic rather than the currently flawed CBT/GET 'fatigue' clinics (their clinic was in fact biomedically led until 2005). Of course, the Scottish Public Health Network recommended the same, but we unsurprisingly got the Lothian ME/CFS clinic instead.

At the weekend,  after reading this article, I discovered the Wagah border-crossing ceremony, a huge tourist attraction, where the Pakistan and India flags are lowered every day, and the border closed, before sunset. Michael Palin has called it 'choreographed contempt', and there is more than a touch of Monty Python to the whole thing. Gloriously camp, though, obviously, serious undertones.


*Had an email today from a reader whose partner has ME. I loved this: 'Great read, shit illness, be proud for looking it in the eye and spitting'.


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