Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371

MK Czerwiec

Published by Penn State University Press 2021

Taking Turns

Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371

MK Czerwiec
With contributions by: MK Czerwiec

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781637790182

Overview
Contents

About this book

Fear of contagion, isolated patients, a surge of overwhelming and unpreventable deaths, and the frontline healthcare workers who shouldered the responsibility of seeing us through a deadly epidemic: as we continue to confront the global pandemic caused by COVID-19, Taking Turns reminds us that we’ve been through this before. Only a few decades ago, the world faced another terrifying and deadly health crisis: HIV/AIDS.

Nurse MK Czerwiec began working at the Illinois Masonic Medical Center’s HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371 in the 1990s—a pivotal time in the history of AIDS. Deaths from the disease in the United States peaked in 1995 and then dropped drastically in the following years, with the release of effective drug treatments. In this graphic memoir, Czerwiec provides an insider’s view of the lives of healthcare workers, patients, and loved ones from Unit 371. With humor, insight, and emotion, MK shows how the patients and staff cared for one another, how the sick faced their deaths, and how the survivors looked for hope in what seemed, at times, like a hopeless situation.

Drawn in a restrained, inviting style, Taking Turns is an open, honest look at suffering, grief, and resilience among a community of medical professionals and patients at the heart of the AIDS epidemic.

Author / Editor information

Czerwiec MK :

MK Czerwiec, RN, MA, is Artist-in-Residence at Northwestern University’s Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities and the cocurator of the Graphic Medicine website (graphicmedicine.org). She has served as a Senior Fellow of the George Washington School of Nursing Center for Health Policy and Media Engagement and as an Applied Cartooning Fellow of the Center for Cartoon Studies. She is a coauthor of Graphic Medicine Manifesto and the editor of Menopause: A Comic Treatment, both published by Penn State University Press. MK is also the comics editor for the journal Literature & Medicine.

Reviews

“Rather than the usual medical tales of professional-minded strangers treating faceless victims, Czerwiec’s vignettes become about bonding intimately over suffering and death, watching the community be decimated at the same time as mutual nursing was building connections. Some of the pages are heart-wrenching, and the story has the potential to be supremely depressing, but Czerwiec wrings hope from the honesty of her simple, cheerful cartooning style.”
—Publishers Weekly

“MK Czerwiec’s tales of her nursing work on an AIDS unit chart a remarkable episode in the history of medicine. It’s a time of staggering loss but also remarkable change. Through the lives and deaths of individual patients, written and drawn in documentary detail, we see the power dynamic between doctor and patient begin to shift. When cure is not an option, care takes on a new meaning.”
—Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	15
2 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	39
3 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	55
4 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	65
5 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	73
6 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	107
7 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	119
8 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	137
9 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	157
10 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	167
11 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	193
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	205
Additional Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	209

Language: English
Publisher: Penn State University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 232
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 184
- Coloured Images: 184
- Other: 184 color illustrations

eBook

Published: October 26, 2021
ISBN: 9781637790182