Flu, Genres, and the Rhetoric of Medicine

Immer Lebend, ¿INFLUENZA?, AJA Y QUE MÁS....JAJAJ, flickr, CC license

​Coming to you still alive from the home infirmary of Lawrence, Kansas, a state in the midst of the big influenza outbreak . . . Or is that epidemic?

According to the Center for Disease Control, Kansas is in the very highest category of “Influenza-Like Illness.” Lucky us.

Yes, I came down with the flu this week. If mine is the milder version you get when you’ve had a flu shot, as I’ve had, then I pity the completely unprotected. At its peak, I had a fever of 103.9. OK, I guess I’m bragging a bit. I’ve never had such a high fever, and I survived. Of course, it took that night’s fever to get me to call the doctor’s office in the morning about my “bad cold.” Nope, flu.

So now I get to use the common metaphor of flu--flu as a battle.  I’ve been battling the flu since Wednesday, after fighting it off for a couple of days, but I survived its onslaught and will live to fight another day!

I lack the brain power this week to produce what I had planned—in nonacademic language, a listing and reflection on some of the big ideas about genres that have been built from Carolyn Miller’s originating article on “Genre as Social Action.” Carolyn is coming to my university this coming week to give a major lecture, and we’re very excited here. Fortunately, my flu will be well into recovery by then, my doctor assures me, but not in time for this blog post.
 
You can read about Carolyn on the NCState site. And some great stuff about genre on the genre across borders website, started by Carolyn and her students at North Carolina State.

So instead of a list of brilliant ideas from Carolyn, about all I’ve got right now is a brief list of the genres of patienthood that have surrounded me the past several days:
 
Prescriptions
Patient information sheets
Pill bottle labels
Thermometer readings
Doctor consultations
Credit card receipts from copayments
Piles of used tissues (oh wait, not a genre, and too much information)

Fun stuff, huh? For some more interesting discussions of the rhetoric of medicine, you might take a look at one of many fascinating studies and discussions others have published. Two of my favorites--
 
Judy Segal, Health and the Rhetoric of Medicine

Carol Berkenkotter, Patient Tales: Case Histories and the Uses of Narrative in Psychiatry

And many more listed, along with lots of information about the rhetoric of medicine, on the website run by Rhetoricians of Health and Medicine.

​Until next week, when I will surely be well enough to celebrate Valentine's Day . . . or not.