I'm sure you've heard by now that Palliative Care physician, Nathan Gray, MD, is also an amateur cartoonist. He enjoys combining these two passions, medicine and graphic art.
Several of Gray's illustrations have been published. This time his work appears in the August issue of the AMA Journal of Ethics. It is a moving story about one of his previous patients, one he followed through his residency. The article is titled Cruel Carousel: The Grim Grind of “Compassionate” Dialysis.
This graphic narrative tells of an experience Gray encountered while caring for an undocumented patient suffering from end-stage renal disease (ESRD). As the journal's website explains, "Cruel Carousel tells one of the stories that most profoundly shaped the author’s own views on health care for undocumented immigrants. Graphic narrative was chosen because words alone couldn’t capture the patient’s experience or the author’s distress about what happened to him."