I’ve spent the last week reading. I haven’t done much else, because my cough has reached the point where it’s slowing down my movements: constant coughing fits are tiring. On […]
Columnists
Anna Donald: Mind and body
Thank you again to people sending such encouraging comments. I can’t tell you how uplifting it is to wake up to such lovely responses. A few people have asked me […]
Liz Wager: Training and the placebo effect
I’ve been at the Vienna School of Clinical Research running a publication workshop for an enthusiastic bunch of doctors, researchers and drug company folk. Back home, catching up on my […]
Julian Sheather on the Wellcome exhibition “Life Before Death”
Jannik Boehmfeld is dead. He is six years old, a year younger than my eldest son. He is lying on his back. His mouth is open but his eyes are […]
Anna Donald: Making meaning in the now, for the now
First, I want to thank the many people who have posted such thoughtful comments to this blog. I’ve been a bit overwhelmed, though not surprised, by people’s generosity (again and […]
Julian Sheather: Does art make people better doctors?
Recently a colleague of mine, a GP, told me she was taking a three-month sabbatical. She was going to sit on an island in the Mediterranean and do very little […]
Anna Donald: Tests
Test results can be nerve racking. They turn a complex stream of life into a binary event in which your fate seems to hang in the balance. I was especially […]
Anna Donald returns from a Buddhist retreat
I am back from purdah, having just returned from 10 days of ‘Noble Silence’ at a Vipassana meditation retreat in Sydney’s Blue Mountains. These charitable Buddhist programmes are run on […]
Anna Donald: Life in the shadow
Dear Reader, I should introduce myself before launching into a blog which I hope is not too depressing: living in the shadow of death. This is my starting point, as […]
Simon Chapman: Conferences and carbon
Earlier this year I declined an invitation to fly all expenses from Sydney to Geneva to speak for 15 minutes at an international cancer conference. There was a hole in […]