When Nisha Patel went through her medical records, including psychiatric records from visits to hospital and her university health clinic, the feeling spurred her to make art.
“It really started this this anger within me,” she said. “These were all very personal experiences for me. But for the system, they were just yet another form to fill out.”
“From that kind of anger at how impersonal some of these messages were, and some of the stuff that had been left out, I started writing these poems.”
The result is a new collection, A Fate Worse Than Death.
Patel says people should try and be attuned to their bodies, to be able to better communicate with the medical system when it becomes necessary.
“The body itself is very complex, and most of us will not know everything…that goes wrong with our bodies,” she said. “But starting the process of being connected to pain, to suffering, to hardship, but also to joy in your body, I think, is the type of rigor that a medical system will not provide for you.”
She says that by doing so, both you and the medical system will benefit.
“You are both bringing the best you can. You are giving the information only you can, and the medical system is giving you information that you can’t get yourself. And that I think is the merging of two problem and solution oriented entities coming together to try to solve or to cure or to fix or alleviate or affirm a thing as complex as your body.”
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