The Coconut Day: A poetic Interpretation of Seizure
Experiences
Featherstone, Valerie A
Link here
This first Friday review is, slightly unusual it’s a
research study; an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) of people's
seizure (ictal) experiences, presented via poetic interpretations.
I was intrigued poetry has played a significant part in
exploring my epilepsy experience. It’s
been a way of capturing the post-ictal (the period after a seizure, where the
brain is rebooting) states. Poetry has
helped me to deal with challenging feelings, express frustration, with my body,
medication issues and discrimination. It
also helped map and show how much progress I had made.
So when I ready Valerie A Featherstone’s Study I was really
fascinated about how poetry was created, from the words of participants living
with epilepsy and how this was then presented as research. How poetry wasn’t being used solely as
creative expression but to gain insight and understanding from the researcher
and “consequently, fuse scientific knowledge with human experiences”.
The study is well worth a through read – but if
pressed for time, skip to the poetry, The Coconut Day brilliantly illustrates
the bewilderment that accompanies post-ictal states.
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