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Publisher : Weidenfeld & Nicolson (10 Jun. 2021)

ASIN: B08HMN732X ( Kindle Edition)

My interest in this book is twofold: first the cover made me stop and look because it reminded me of the art of Frida Kahlo, and secondly, I am an unwell woman. I have been diagnosed with relapsing remitting Multiple Sclerosis for the past 25 years – ooh my silver anniversary, what do I get for that? Since then my health has deteriorated, mainly due to a back injury I sustained when I was 11. I did a somersault and landed awkwardly, causing two fractures to my spine. I was very lucky to be upright and walking, but scar tissue, muscle damage and deteriorating discs have caused so much stiffness and instability. This is managed with injections in my spine for pain and a regular procedure my compressed nerves are severed to stop nerve pain radiating into my pelvis and legs. It’s a lot to deal with, and I truly don’t know how I’m going to wake up every morning. I just wake up, take the medication and see what I can manage that day. I’ve just had a week where even looking at this screen would be impossible because of optic neuritis.

In my many years in the ‘kingdom of the sick’ and working as a counsellor for people with chronic ill health, I’ve noticed a major difference in how men and women, with exactly the same ailments, are treated. This book traces a history of women’s ill health and the treatment of it, for many years solely by a male medical profession. To quote the blurb:

‘In Unwell Women Elinor Cleghorn unpacks the roots of the perpetual misunderstanding, mystification and misdiagnosis of women’s bodies, and traces the journey from the ‘wandering womb’ of ancient Greece, the rise of witch trials in Medieval Europe, through the dawn of Hysteria, to modern day understandings of autoimmune diseases, the menopause and conditions like endometriosis. Packed with character studies of women who have suffered, challenged and rewritten medical orthodoxy – and drawing on her own experience of un-diagnosed Lupus disease – this is a ground-breaking and timely exposé of the medical world and woman’s place within it.’

‘We are taught that medicine is the art of solving our body’s mysteries. And as a science, we expect medicine to uphold the principles of evidence and impartiality. We want our doctors to listen to us and care for us as people, but we also need their assessments of our pain and fevers, aches and exhaustion to be free of any prejudice about who we are, our gender, or the colour of our skin. But medicine carries the burden of its own troubling history. The history of medicine, of illness, is a history of people, of their bodies and their lives, not just physicians, surgeons, clinicians and researchers. And medical progress has always reflected the realities of a changing world, and the meanings of being human.‘

In my own experience, I have found the world of neurology, clinical, abrupt and sexist. My diagnosis is old now and I have had new neurologists interrogate me on who diagnosed me, why and where – almost as if I’ve made it up out of thin air. I’ve been patronisingly asked whether I might ‘weep’ a lot, or have fatigue and pain due to being depressed. I asked if they’d send me to psychiatry if they felt it was all in my head – I didn’t care whether it was a mental illness, I just wanted to be treated and helped to get better. Once I asked for a referral the consultant backed down and said it’s definitely physical, because we have clinical evidence. I remember thinking that this was a complete ‘mindfuck.’ I started to question my own sanity, if I had a symptom I would wonder if it was real or in my head. Was I making myself ill and for what reason? A change of neurologist and several years of therapy helped me to see that the previous team had been quite abusive and manipulative. My rehabilitation consultant admitted that there was an old trend in neurology of not telling people with early MS about their diagnosis – the thought being that if you didn’t know you had an illness, you wouldn’t act as if you have an illness. Apparently, according to my old team ‘some women give up if they’re told they have a disability’.

I trained over many years in mental health work, and have worked as an advice worker, advocate and now a counsellor for people with disabilities. I have heard the same story told by so many women: being told they need to get a hobby or go out more; that they need anti-depressants when they don’t feel depressed; that maybe they need to have children (?); or that maybe, like the Victorian hysterics, this is all in their heads. My own favourite is being told to get rid of my cats so I could have children, when I have a diagnosis of Hughes Syndrome which causes recurrent miscarriage. My main area of work is reprogramming women who have all eventually been diagnosed with serious health conditions like Lupus, MS, Lyme Disease, Degenerative Disc Disease. All of them once told they were hypochondriacs and hysterical about their normal everyday aches and pains.

One of the ladies from my ‘Authentic Self’ workshop, was so scared of making a fuss about her pain that when she injured her leg on holiday she carried on. She walked on a fracture for four weeks because she’d been made to feel she made too much fuss about the pain she suffered from fibromyalgia and degenerative discs. Women should not be made to feel this way by the medical profession. Not once has a male come to me with the same story. Not one. In a BBC article ( link below) the same stories come up in relation to heart and gynaecological conditions. Women who reported to emergency rooms in acute pain were less likely to be prescribed pain relief, and where it was prescribed it took much longer to reach the patient.

‘This can have lethal consequences. In May 2018 in France, a 22-year old woman called emergency services saying her abdominal pain was so acute she felt she was “going to die.” “You’ll definitely die one day, like everyone else,” the operator replied. When the woman was taken to hospital after a five-hour wait, she had a stroke and died of multiple organ failure.’

I’m looking forward to reading about where these ideas about women’s health come from. I’d hoped once to write this book, but sadly my health meant PhD work on disability being put to one side. I feel this will demystify why women are treated this way and I hope to buy several copies to give to my friends and clients in the future. This book is not just anticipated, it is needed.

Links and Further Reading

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180518-the-inequality-in-how-women-are-treated-for-pain

Havi Carel. Illness. Routledge; 1st edition (20 Aug. 2008) – this a brilliant look at the ‘lived experience’ of chronic illness, the philosophical background to how we view illness, and the author’s own experiences as a woman and a patient. Utterly brilliant.

A DCI Michael Yorke Thriller

Publisher: Dark Heart Publishing 15th December 2020

ASIN: B086MK51JF

I’ve never read Wes Markin before and what a way to start. This is book 6 in the DCI Michael Yorke series and what an introduction! This author is certainly not for the faint hearted and this isn’t a cosy Christmas murder mystery. For this final instalment an old foe reappears at Christmas, tearing Yorke away from his family and bringing him closer to finding a lost friend and colleague.

If you fail to stop a killer, then they will only grow stronger.

DCI Michael Yorke and Emma Gardner are still plagued by guilt over their failure to catch the murderous psychiatrist known as the Conduit, and the loss of their former colleague to insanity. On Christmas Day, following a brutal massacre in Leeds, Yorke and Gardner find themselves once again chasing the ruthless puppeteer, believing that they have the initiative. But as the two investigators draw closer to the Conduit, they quickly discover that they were never truly in control, and completely vulnerable to what comes next. A rising tide of psychological warfare and the horrendous truth behind the fate of their former colleague.

I wonder, considering I’m a therapist, whether I should worry about the amount of books I’ve read recently featuring murderous psychologists/psychiatrists! I choose to think it’s a literary representation of the fear people often have about therapists – what we might magically discern about someone and how terrified they are about facing their fears. This particular sociopath is terrifying, but hides behind the tweedy and beardy disguise of a psychology lecturer. However, behind the new identity, lies the same twisted philosophy. The Conduit believes he can ‘heal’ psychological trauma by using hypnotherapy to take the patient back to the moment of trauma and changing the narrative. Yet the narrative is changed to something destructive and violent, shattering the psyche and planting the darkest rage, paranoia and thoughts of revenge.

The opening is Christmas Day at a nursing home for elderly people in Leeds, where Bernard is looking forward to spending the day with the new lady in his life. He’s been incredibly lonely since his wife died and he is grateful to find love again so late in life. Bernard struggles with PTSD following active service in the Falklands War, where both his friends were shot and killed in front of him. Every so often, loud noises or voices can take him straight back to the battlefield and the chaos of war. On this day, as his fellow residents start gathering for lunch, he receives a text message. From there it’s as if a switch has been thrown in his brain and his fellow residents and nursing staff become the Argentinian soldiers he faced that day back in the 1980s. He collects and gun from his room, makes his way back to the dining room and starts to gun down the soldiers who killed his friends and have come back for him. It’s only after multiple fatalities that Bernard returns and sees the full horror of what he’s done. He doesn’t link it to the genial man with the beard he’s been running into on his daily walk in the park. The man who offered to help with his trauma, if Bernard would trust him and open his mind to him. With no other choice, Bernard turns the gun on himself.

This terrible act drags DCI Yorke away from his family; his patient wife is understanding but he worries about how long this might last. He’s already had one shock this morning, his adopted teenage son has announced his engagement and Yorke isn’t sure he was supportive enough. He also has his previous colleague, Emma Gardener, on his coat tails. She believes Leeds is where her partner Mark Topham is, on the run since his violent reaction to the murder of his partner. Can Yorke really take her with him, when she’s no longer a police officer? Will they be able to unmask The Conduit before he takes over another mind and shatters even more lives? There is also the subplot – a female prisoner, victim and conspirator of The Conduit, having sessions with a prison psychiatrist. A game of cat and mouse seems to ensue between them, that becomes very dark and twisted.

The writing has an addictive energy within it, that means you can’t put it down, even when the horror you’re witnessing is too much. I would definitely suggest trigger warnings for violence and sexual violence. Sometimes, it’s not easy to read. Yet you can’t look away. The author is incredibly skilled at building up tension and it becomes unbearable towards the end. There are so many twists – I thought he’d be caught any minute, then he would elude them again. The way The Conduit burrows into people’s minds and unearths their greatest trauma is very disturbing. These people really have endured terrible experiences and watching this man re-traumatise them made me so angry. I was also horrified by the treatment and horrifying truth of his loyal dog. Yet I did find myself enjoying it. If you have met DCI Yorke before, I’m sure you’ll have been waiting for this novel. If not, this novel stands alone well, but why not look out for the whole series. But be prepared to read them all in one go because you won’t be able to stop once you’ve started! If you like your thrillers darker than dark, and your heroes and heroines battle scarred but steadfast and determined, then this is the perfect book for you.

This book is for those who communicate thunder, rain, sunlight, hope, and pain with their hands.

When I was a baby my Dad used to help make ends meet by bare knuckle fighting at horse fairs. He would travel with local gypsies to fairs like Appleby and fight for them against other travellers. Then he would bring home wads of cash and the odd cut to his lip or round his eyes. Before I was born Dad was in the army and they saw the potential to train him as a boxer. He was the ABA champion at his weight and would have gone to the 1968 Olympics, except for a terrible incident where other soldiers attacked him in the night and threw him from a first floor window onto concrete. He suffered a head and neck injury, and never boxed again. I’m not sure I could ever have watched him box. To me, my Dad is my big cuddly and protective bear of a man. I couldn’t imagine him being aggressive or ruthless, even though he always tells me it’s a controlled aggression. This book of poetry lets us inside the mind of a boxer before and during a match.

Each short stanza cleverly gives the sense that the poem is split into rounds and there is sometimes even a bell punctuating the last line. These are short lines, and short punchy words suggesting the rhythm of a fight – dancing feet, short sharp jabs and staccato movement. This is a debut fight, so there’s no experience for him to fall back on. He’s never felt the bright lights of a proper ring with an audience. We hear his self talk: the talking up of the ‘golden road paved to a win’ but underneath there’s doubt and fear. Then he pulls it back and sounds like his own coach – this isn’t how I do things, I trained, I know what I’m doing, I didn’t come here to lose.

There are beautiful little insights into how it feels physically to take take a punch. I loved the image of the boxer back in his corner, the yelling of the coach and how the ‘water feels like gold, red bee stings.’ I also like his description of taking blows to the head, and the ringing in his ears. He needs the corner again and shake them off, reassess his game plan. He talks himself up, he can beat him because the opponent ‘wants’ to fall. He’s wobbly. It won’t take much. He needs to ‘try to turn his face to a puddle on the canvas’. It’s as much a mental battle as a physical one as the boxer reminds himself that he has a game plan, he just needs to follow it. His opponent is undisciplined: ‘Comes out with loose cannons on fire / Swiping air, wild with no game plan.’ Winning is about being sure of your own game and preparation, but finding chinks of weakness to exploit.

This was an interesting poem, full of insight into how a sportsman thinks and formulates a game plan. The rollercoaster of emotion from self-doubt to almost reckless confidence was fascinating. I could imagine my Dad when he started at 16, trying to keep his fear in check and follow his training. One line that resonated with me more than any of the others when I think of my Dad.

‘The bulbs from bright lights smack me/ as sweat shines like brand new money.’

He once told me that he was fighting in a club, the ring surrounded by tables where men and women in evening dress were shouting and almost baying for blood. It made him uncomfortable that his sweat and brute force were a currency, no more than a paid entertainment to them. That they might bet more than he was being paid to feel sick, to feel pain, to shed blood. This boxer’s thought that his sweat is money reminded me of that story and made me think this is a thought common to many fighters. I was amazed that in this relatively short poem, I could find so many connections between this young fighter and my father.

Kwansabas

The Kwansaba is a genuinely African-American poetry form. Created during the peak of the Black Arts Movement, in coordination with the creation of Kwanzaa itself, a kwansaba is praise poem that is seven lines long with seven words in each line with no word longer than seven letters. Given the significance of the number seven to Kwanzaa, the celebration’s meaning is literally built into the poem.