Like dementia, persistent pain comes with irreparable losses: physical restrictions, strained relationships, financial problems, perished dreams and ambitions. Both conditions require ethnographers and care professionals to shift focus from cure to care, from treating illnesses to learning how to live with restrictions. The question thus emerges: how do we learn to live with such ‘diseases that do not go away’ …
Tag Archives: Rehabilitation
Medical Anthropology in a Military Treatment Facility
In March 2004, after being hired by UMBC, I attended a meeting at Walter Reed Army Medical Center with a colleague from my new department and several military and civilian clinicians. There we discussed the specific and the vague challenges that faced the increasing number of US military service-members who were coming into the …