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Today’s word of the day is “iatrogenesis.” It means medicine-caused illness. I stumbled across it reading a Jody Berland essay on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome this morning. She attributes it to Ivan Illich’s usage in his writings on medicine (for instance, this piece. But I suspect the term has a longer history worth looking up. In …

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Back in graduate school, one of our cats (Ya-Ya) was acting out and attacking the other cat. Like all cats, he is pretty terrified of the vet. We took him anyway, and they suggested a pet psychologist. (You know where this is headed, right?) So the pet psychologist comes into the vet examination room, and …

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Announcing an exciting new feature of cancer blogging: symptom Haikus! Since at the beginning of EBR I won’t be able to tell whether most symptoms are actual side effects or just things happening in my body, and they come on slowly and cumulatively, the minimalist form of the Haiku seems appropriate. It also gives form …