The language of pain - David Biro

Pain regularly accompanies illness, as David Biro knows only too well. Faced with a bone marrow transplant, the young doctor was determined to study his pain but found himself unable to articulate its depths, even to his doctors and wife. He has now discovered a way to break through the silent wall of suffering-physical and psychological-and wants to share it with others. In his new book, the critically acclaimed author expertly weaves together compelling stories and artwork from patients along with insights from some of our greatest thinkers, writers, and artists.

In the tradition of Susan Sontag's Illness as Metaphor, Biro's groundbreaking book is sure to transform our understanding of and ability to communicate pain. Language can alleviate the loneliness of pain and improve the chances that other people-family, friends, and doctors-empathize and respond most effectively.

One of New York magazine's Top Doctors, David Biro, MD, practices in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center. He lives with his wife and twin boys in New York City.

[E]rudite and ambitious....Biro brings an extraordinary range of voices into this silence and moves through a huge variety of experience and narrative, without straying too far from the bedside.
Perri Klass

This well-researched book will be helpful to medical professionals and psychologists as well as those who suffer from chronic or extreme pain, offering encouragement and inspiration for explaining their experiences to their doctors.

A literate and deeply felt work of medical philosophy that ponders the subtle mystery of how words give meaning to-and even relief from-corporeal and psychic anguish.
Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression