Main description:

The announcement of a serious diagnosis is a solemn moment where directions shift, priorities change, and life appears in sharper focus. It is also a moment when a story takes shape. It is a story we are able to imagine, even if we haven't experienced it firsthand, because the moment of diagnosis is as pervasive in popular media, television shows, movies, novels, and newspaper articles as it is in medicine.

Exploring stories about diagnosis and pondering the impact they have on how we experience health and disease, Diagnosis: Truths and Tales shares stories written from the perspectives of both those who receive diagnoses and those who deliver them, and confronts how we address illness in our personal lives and in popular media.

Contents:

List of Illustrations
Foreword: Giving the Story Back - by Lisa Sanders
Acknowledgments

Introduction

Touch of the Flu:
The Paradoxes and Contradictions of Diagnoses

Whose Stories?
Narrative Exchange and Self-Diagnosis

"The Expertness of His Healer":
Diagnosis, Disclosure, and the Power of a Profession

"The News Is Not Altogether Comforting": Fiction and the Diagnostic Moment

Breaking Bad:
The Diagnostic Moment in Film and Television - with Thierry Jutel

A Picture Paints a Thousand Words:
The Graphic Diagnosis - with Ian Williams

The Intellectual Documentary:
Methods for Understanding the Diagnostic Moment

What's There to Tell? Diagnosis-as-Mystery

Notes
References
Index