Title: Illness & Healing
Subtitle: images of cancer
First published: January 2007
Description: The basis for this autobiographical essay on the experience of having a malignancy are 92 illustrations, all the work of the author; they include 32 ink or woodcut sketches, 24 charcoal drawings, and many acrylic paintings (16 in full colour). Pope's images evoke the dependence, fear, loneliness, pain, and even the mutilation surrounding cancer illness and therapy.

He describes in plain language the course of his own illness, diagnosis, and treatment; he also relates the experiences of a few fellow patients. Most intriguing is his ready description of the stories behind his pictures: who posed, how he painted them, and what exactly he was trying to convey. When the book was published, Pope was in a hard-won remission from Hodgkin's Disease, but he died the following year of treatment-induced bone marrow failure. <sup>[1][1]</sup>


  [1]: http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=1242
Subjects: Abandonment, Art of Medicine, Body Self-Image, Cancer, Caregivers, Death and Dying, Depression, Disease and Health, Doctor-Patient Relationship, Empathy, Family Relationships, Grief, Hospitalization, Human Worth, Illness and the Family, Illness Narrative/Pathography, Loneliness, Love, Medical Testing, Mother-Son Relationship, Patient Experience, Suffering, Surgery, Technology