Seeing illness in art and medicine: a patient and printmaker collaboration Devan Stahl, 1 Darian Goldin Stahl 2 1 Michigan State University, Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences, College of Human Medicine, East Lansing, Michigan, USA 2 Malaspina Artist Run Centre, Vancouver, British Columbia, USA Correspondence to Professor Devan Stahl, Michigan State University, Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences, College of Human Medicine, East Fee Hall, 965 East Fee Road, Rm C213, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA; stahldev@msu.edu Accepted 18 February 2016 To cite: Stahl D, Stahl DG. Med Humanit Published Online First: [ please include Day Month Year] doi:10.1136/medhum-2015- 010838 ABSTRACT For many patients, viewing one’s illness through medical imaging technology can be an unsettling experience. Patients are likely not to see themselves represented in medical images and may find it difficult to reconcile this new image with their own body image. In this article, a patient with multiple sclerosis and a printmaker describe a collaborative project they have developed, wherein the patient’s medical images are incorporated into pieces of fine art. The aim of the project is to open up the interpretation of the ill-body to persons outside the medical field, so as to do justice to the multiple dimensions of the body chronically ill persons often inhabit. REIMAGINING THE BODY IN ILLNESS Medical students are taught to see the human body in an objective and singular fashion in order to diagnose and treat disease. Outside of medicine, however, people see, understand and relate to their bodies in multiple ways. The philosopher Gail Weiss explains, “…images of the body are not dis- crete but form a series of overlapping identities whereby one or more aspects of that body appear to be especially salient at any given point in time.” 1 Rather than a singular and cohesive understanding of our body, people tend to have multiple body images, which they have constructed through their interactions with others. 1 Most people, of course, do not consider how their self-understanding is shaped by their body image until something goes awry. It is only once our body disrupts our every- day experience of the world that we are forced to contend with the multiple and often inconsistent ways we have come to see and understand our bodies. The experience of being diagnosed with a chronic illness is the kind of disruption that can force a person to reimagine his or her body. This was my own experience being diagnosed with mul- tiple sclerosis (MS). My diagnosis was accompanied by a very specific visual image of my body: an MRI. Before my diagnosis, I had never considered myself able-bodied or temporarily able-bodied. It was only through confronting my own hidden illness that this previously unacknowledged image of myself came into relief. The visible spots on my MRI have now come to shape my self-identity and experience of the world. Even when I am not phys- ically unwell or disabled, those white spots shape my body image, because they have caused me to relate to vast network of clinicians and patients who interpret and interact with my ill-body in par- ticular ways. Although my clinicians are considered the ‘experts’ on my condition and often act as the sole interpreters of my MRI, my understanding of what those images mean far exceeds medicine’s interpretative framework. Both clinicians and patients can benefit from acknowledging the poten- tial of medical images to profoundly alter a patient’s self-understanding and body image. In what follows, I, DS, will explore the unique way I have come to manage my new body image through collaborative work with my sister DGS, a printmaker who incorporates my MRIs in her artwork. The aim of our project is to open up the interpretation of the ill-body to persons outside the medical field, so as to do justice to the multiple dimensions of the body chronically ill persons often inhabit. Rather than ask persons with chronic illness to develop a singular account of their body, we hope to encourage a multiplicity of body images to emerge for the individual as well as begin a conversation about what it means to be chronic- ally ill. The meaning of illness is never self-evident, but demands interpretation. Given the often demeaning ways persons with disabilities and chronic illness are treated in medicine and the wider culture, reimagining and reinterpreting illness may be necessary for our collective health. INCORPORATING MEDICAL IMAGES—DS For sighted people, visual images of the body’s interior can have a powerful effect on one’s body image. In general, such images are produced, disse- minated and interpreted by the medical community. By making the invisible visible, clinicians have a unique perspective on the body and are able to diagnose patients with increasing accuracy. For many patients, being able to see the internal work- ings of one’s own body can be validating—either confirming the patient’s subjective experience of disease has a verifiable source or that his or her body is properly recovering after trauma. Such nar- ratives are common in medical and bioethics litera- ture and help to support the use of medical imagining as an important medium by which doctors and patients can discuss illness. 2 Medical images have the potential to be more than simply confirmatory, however. For better or worse, medical images can radically transform a patient’s relationship with his or her body. For many, viewing a medical image can reconcile the tension a patient has with his or her body after a medical intervention. Astrophysicist Summer Ash, for example, was able to improve her relationship to her own heart through seeing it on an echocar- diogram. Ash received a valve-sparing aortic root replacement after her valve became enlarged as a result of a congenital defect. 3 To her surprise, Ash’s new heart was very strong; so strong in fact, that its Stahl D, Stahl DG. Med Humanit 2016;0:1–5. doi:10.1136/medhum-2015-010838 1 Original article JMH Online First, published on March 21, 2016 as 10.1136/medhum-2015-010838 Copyright Article author (or their employer) 2016. Produced by BMJ Publishing Group Ltd under licence. group.bmj.com on March 22, 2016 - Published by http://mh.bmj.com/ Downloaded from