Monday, December 27, 2010

Gallery: "Quality of life"

This is another installment to our Gallery Series. As a reminder, I generally pick something related to palliative medicine and then begin an online hunt to find art work and poetry with this word or phrase in the title.  Hopefully this becomes a stepping point for further thought and exploration.

All art work is copyrighted to the artist (often only a screen name is known), and listed in sequential order at the end. For further Gallery posts, links are provided for convenience at the bottom.

Today's Gallery theme is "Quality of Life", so picked secondary to this phrase's essential part in the definition of palliative care.

The definition of QOL from thefreedictionary.com:
Quality of life (n): Your personal satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) with the cultural or intellectual conditions under which you live (as distinct from material comfort).


"Quality of Life" copyright Harley.


Pain roils within me, without
Despair assails me, and doubt
What is the use of all this striving for survival?
What is the quality of this persistent life?
A Fleshy form twisted into tangled knots
And mind cramped with bitter regret
The sun shines, but darkness covers me with futility
Soul stripped to the bone
Thousand-yard stare fixed on far horizon
Sane men call me mad




"Quality Of Life - Poem" (Aug. 2000) by A.K. Whitehead


I have lived a life-- or two,
depending where the line is drawn.
What has been accomplished
is, as if it were, undone,
and what remains undone 
is the heel that kicks the spur. 
Life, time, accomplishment
define each other...
and their exclusions
rising like pale mountain ranges
whose heights perceptibly increase
with their proximity

Finally a poem read by the author herself.  This is "Quality of Life" by poet Harryette Mullen. It is a part of her 5th collection, the book entitled Sleeping with the Dictionary (2002)



Art work displayed:
"Quality of Life" (2010) Sandy Brooke
"Quality of Life" (2007) spotandbones
"Quality of Life Painting" (2007) Patrick Sheridan

Past gallery posts: "Itch", "Dysphoria","Last Breath", "Pain", "Afterlife", "Restless","Stillness" and "Grief"

4 Responses to “Gallery: "Quality of life"”

Stugee1 said...
December 28, 2010 at 10:48 AM

That definition of quality of life has to be the worst definition I've ever encountered - both literally and grammatically. There are plenty of good dictionaries out there. I wish people would stop depending on on-line, fanciful dictionaries and encyclopedias. We are dumbing ourselves down.


Amy Clarkson said...
December 28, 2010 at 11:40 AM

Thanks for the feedback! Errors corrected. I would actually be interested, though, in the definition you would use... or anyone else out there. We may get a good discussion just in what the definition of quality of life is!


Stugee1 said...
December 30, 2010 at 5:35 AM

Amy, I will look at some other definitions and think of my own. Regarding the definition posted, cultural and intellectual conditions would have to place extremely low on the list of most palliative care patients as they describe quality of life to us. Thier quality issues are much lower on Maslow's hierarchy than this definition would describe.


Amy Clarkson said...
March 16, 2011 at 11:54 PM

Thanks for the feedback! Errors corrected. I would actually be interested, though, in the definition you would use... or anyone else out there. We may get a good discussion just in what the definition of quality of life is!