Jess

“Medical students are taught to imagine a binary: doctor and patient, science and faith, objective truth and superstitious fallacy, us and them. Our morning rounds are an exercise in telling and retelling patients’ stories in a way that explains their illnesses, cloaked in the sense of objectivity offered by a white coat. But the stories told on these rounds are just as prone to false truths as the reports of an amnesia patient, subconsciously shaped by our priors, our communities, our own narratives. On rounds, a woman’s pain might be recast as anxiety, for instance, while a vitamin deficiency born of alcohol use might be regarded as a deserved punishment.”
― Pria Anand, The Mind Electric: A Neurologist on the Strangeness and Wonder of Our Brains

“When one is one’s own nucleus, one has no more deviations. Then one is one’s own solemnity, and no longer fears consuming oneself when serving the consuming ritual — the ritual is the unfolding of the life of the nucleus, the ritual is not outside it: the ritual is inherent.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H.

“I’d always been afraid of delirium and error. My error, however, must be the path of a truth: since only when I err do I step out of what I know and what I understand.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H.

“there exists a vast liminal expanse that stretches between wellness and illness.”
― Pria Anand, The Mind Electric: A Neurologist on the Strangeness and Wonder of Our Brains