Showing results by author "Rana Awdish" in All Categories

At seven months pregnant, intensive care doctor Rana Awdish suffered a catastrophic medical event, haemorrhaging nearly all of her blood volume and losing her unborn first child. She spent months fighting for her life in her own hospital, enduring a series of organ failures and multiple major surgeries. Every step of the way, Awdish was faced with something even more unexpected and shocking than her battle to survive: her fellow doctors’ inability to see and acknowledge the pain of loss and human suffering, the result of a self-protective barrier hardwired in medical training.

In the aftermath of critical illness, physician and writer Dr. Rana Awdish hits a healing wall. Though medicine had saved her life, it had estranged her from her own body in the process. In an attempt to understand how she came to view her body as a broken object, rather than as a site of meaning, mystery, and quiet wisdom, Awdish deconstructs her medical belief system. What emerges is a profound meditation on the stories we create about ourselves, their value and their limitations.