"This is My Body": Perspectives on Disability, Community, and the Healing Arts
Luke Olsen is a graduate student at Duke Divinity School (MDiv, 2020) and a former Theology, Medicine, and Culture Fellow. Before beginning at Duke, Luke worked at Reality Ministries, a non-profit for people with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities; Sloan Meek is a musician and activist who lives in Durham, NC. Together with Wendy, Sloan speaks about living with cerebral palsy. He is active at Reality Ministries and in the broader Durham community; Wendy Lincicome is an artist who lives with Sloan. Wendy has been Sloan's friend and caregiver for over 20 years. She is active in the North Street Neighborhood, an intentional community for people with and without disabilities; Brian Engelhardt, MA is a first year medical student at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine. Prior to starting at VCU, Brian was a Theology, Medicine, and Culture Fellow at Duke University and a Reality Fellow at Reality Ministries; and Benjamin W. Frush, MD, MA, resident at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital and Vanderbilt University Medical Center, specializing in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics. While in medical school at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Ben was a Theology, Medicine, and Culture Fellow at Duke University
Discussions of chronic pain often center around concepts of “health” and “suffering.” These concepts are often thought to be implicitly understood or self-evident. As such, their normative use in discussions may elide important differences and erase certain experiences. This panel begins with the assumption that friendship with persons experiencing chronic pain and permanent disability nuances and complicates definitions of health and suffering. Such nuance is the ground on which both medicine and religion may honestly and compassionately engage questions of long-term suffering.
This panel will begin with an interview with a person with a permanent disability and his caregiver. The interviewer and moderator is a graduate student in theology who has worked full-time with people with intellectual and developmental disability. Following this interview, there will be two responses from doctors in formation. The respondents will draw from their personal experience working and living with people with disabilities and discuss how these experiences inform their approach to medicine and theology.
The first respondent (Panelist #3) is a first-year medical student with a graduate degree in theology. He will reflect on how his experience working and living with people with and without disabilities informed his understandings of health, dependency, and medical education. The second respondent (Panelist #4) is a first-year Resident specializing in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics. During medical school he earned a Masters in Christian Studies and volunteered extensively at a ministry for people with and without disabilities. He discusses his position between two worlds, as a doctor encountering “medicine’s other.”
The panel concludes with an extended Q&A period with all four panelists.
This panel will begin with an interview with a person with a permanent disability and his caregiver. The interviewer and moderator is a graduate student in theology who has worked full-time with people with intellectual and developmental disability. Following this interview, there will be two responses from doctors in formation. The respondents will draw from their personal experience working and living with people with disabilities and discuss how these experiences inform their approach to medicine and theology.
The first respondent (Panelist #3) is a first-year medical student with a graduate degree in theology. He will reflect on how his experience working and living with people with and without disabilities informed his understandings of health, dependency, and medical education. The second respondent (Panelist #4) is a first-year Resident specializing in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics. During medical school he earned a Masters in Christian Studies and volunteered extensively at a ministry for people with and without disabilities. He discusses his position between two worlds, as a doctor encountering “medicine’s other.”
The panel concludes with an extended Q&A period with all four panelists.