Recovery: The Lost Art of Convalescence

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Karanlık hislerimi bir tarafa bırakacak olursak :) hem hastalar (bu herkes demek oluyor sanırım) hem de doktorlar için kıymetli bir okuma diye düşünüyorum. Bazen bir durup düşünmek, bazen bir durup bakmak gerekiyor. Durmak gerekiyor. Yavaşlamak gerekiyor. Fakat biz vahşice bir hızla talep ve tüketim içindeyiz. Bu gürültü içinde talep ettiklerimize, bazen başkalarının hakkı pahasına ulaşabiliriz. Peki talep ettiklerimiz gerçekten ihtiyacımız olan şeyler mi? İhtiyaçlarımız neler? Ruh, duygular, acı, deneyim, zaman… Hız bir sıfır çarpanı gibi yutuveriyor her şeyi…

To show this, Francis recalls the rich history of slow-paced recovery and of the places and people who enabled it. Not all of it was effective (the milk cures that confined patients to bed for weeks did much harm and no good) but the underlying recognition of taking our time to rebuild ourselves is a profound insight into human regenerative capabilities. We used to know this, but somewhere in the white heat of changing medical technologies, we forgot and came instead to expect the instant and the effortless.With a limb it seemed possible to objectify the part that needed recovery, to look down on the leg and say that's the problem, right there. Working to build up the leg was effort-ful but also visual, my progress inscribed in the bulk of my thigh, the colour of my skin, the comparison with the healthy leg at its side”

At one level, convalescence has something in common with dying in that it forces us to engage with our limitations, the fragile nature of our existence. Why not, then, live fully while we can? I cannot think of anybody – patient or doctor – who will not be helped by reading this short and profound book. More of the work that is needed, it turns out, is up to us and it is likely to be slow going. Often, the field in which we have been left alone is vast and the ground is churned and the few green shoots growing there stand far apart and hardly seem worth gathering. Most powerfully of all, he describes how recovery is possible even if the biological causes of illness cannot be fixed In the course of my medical work I sometimes see viral infections sending their sufferers to bed for weeks or months, and, in a few cases, for years. Why this happens is poorly understood. It’s as if the struggle with illness draws so deeply on one’s inner reserves of strength that the body does all it can to retain its energies, even going so far as to manipulate our sense of effort so that to take a short walk, or to climb a flight of stairs, is to risk exhaustion. Through the successive waves of Covid-19 during 2020 and 2021, I spoke to many patients in whom coronavirus has triggered this kind of enduring fatigue. A letter in the journal Nature Medicine published last March reported that, for their sample group, one in eight victims of Covid-19 suffered symptoms lasting longer than four weeks, one in every 22 had symptoms lasting longer than eight weeks, and one in 44 patients had symptoms lasting longer than 12 weeks. The most persistent symptoms were breathlessness, loss of smell, headache and fatigue. Recovery is an essential book for our times, full of wisdom, compassion and sound advice. Every patient needs a copy of this gem.” –Katherine May, author of Wintering and EnchantmentWe’re doing mental health a lot better, the range of treatments we have available now are fantastic’: Dr Gavin Francis. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Observer Because it takes energy, respect and people have to take care over the environment in which they're recovering and there’s lots and lots of ways of recovery, even when you have a condition itself which isn’t curable or terminal. Just over a year ago, I reviewed Dr Gavin Francis’s Intensive Care, his record of the first 10 months of Covid-19, especially as it affected his work as a GP in Scotland. It ended up on my Best of 2021 list and is still the book I point people to for reflections on the pandemic. Recovery serves as a natural sequel: for those contracting Covid, as well as those who have had it before and may be suffering the effects of the long form, the focus will now be on healing as much as it is on preventing the spread of the virus. This lovely little book spins personal and general histories of convalescence, and expresses the hope that our collective brush with death will make us all more determined to treasure our life and wellbeing.