Cathartic Crohn’s
A Patient’s Reflection on Stickman - The Vicissitudes of Crohn's by Artist Spooky Pooka
By Peter Park, 4th year medical student, Plano Texas
The experience of extreme abdominal pain that feels, quite literally, gut-wrenching and it comes the debate in my head: Should I go to the hospital or not? In peristaltic waves, I wonder “Can I just bear thru it? I really dont want to go to the hospital.” It’s not just a hospital stay. It’s taking time off work. It’s bothering family to transport and take care of me at 26 years old. It’s wondering when I’ll ever be normal again. These thoughts and feelings are no stranger to me when I experience an abdominal flare, and I am sure it may sound familiar to you as well. Perhaps artistic expression can capture some of the emotions and thoughts we experience in our time of distress.
Spooky Pooka is a professional illustrator and artist from Brighton, England and a Crohn’s patient and captures his view of Crohn’s disease through this piece. I encourage you to read through his poems and artistic pieces. Of his amazing work, I want to highlight a few pieces that stood out to me:
From the section, Quod Me Nutrit Me Destruit “What Nourishes Me Also Destroys Me”
“A blind conspiracy of T-cells
A dissonance within, a mute fluttering
The dolorous baying of ravenous entrails
The moxi drawn from reticulated limbs
And the world shudders down under black wings
To void all memory
To disgorge all resonance
To vomit all in exegesis of viscera”
Without having spoken to the artist myself, I will not attempt to predict what he was thinking. So, I will speak to share why I found this so fascinating as a medical student who suffers from Crohn’s Disease. The “blind conspiracy of T-cells” is exactly how autoimmune disease behaves. In normal function, T-cells use markers on cells to identify what’s our body marker vs a foreign body marker (which has to be eliminated). In autoimmune disease, that self body marker can be confused with a foreign body marker and cause T-cells to attack normal healthy tissue. In IBD, this happens within the GI tract. A “blind conspiracy” leads me to believe that T-cells act on their own accord, led by misleading signals, and hypervigilant to any suspicious activity.
Words like “dissonance within”, “to void all memory”, “disgorge all resonance”, “vomit all in exegesis of viscera” describes a state of body that is so critical of itself, ready to eliminate any imperfection or any disconnection from the true self that it destroys the entire body. It reads as if the T-cell is a delirious warrior who once was a hero of sorts in his right. But now, this T-cell warrior has lost his way, driven mad by his rage, and killing his own people in frenzy.
The piece captures the human skeleton with a deer skull and antlers kneeling while holding its belly as old weeds spill out. The background shows perhaps floating T-cells with human eyes. It captures the visceral pain of an abdominal flare - a posture I personify with too easily. It also captures the despair against the T-cells in their march for self-destruction. It seems nothing can escape itself.
Despite this grave depiction, Spooky Pooka ends the graphic series with a final poem that implies a sense of hope. In the section Dolor Hic Tibi Proderit Olim “Some Day This Pain will be Useful to You”, it is the ending lines I reread over again.
“The tree’s womb may regurgitate old souls
If only for one moment…
It may grow flesh like life”
I’m not sure what it means. I’m not sure why it fascinates me. Perhaps I am desperate to find meaning and purpose behind my suffering. That my abdominal pain will somehow manifest as strength in my nearly malnourished body. Or that my constant fatigue and uncontrolled bathroom breaks is somehow a sign of strength. During my hospitalizations, when I was most alone, I would think that “maybe suffering is just pointless suffering.”
But this poem and the picture behind it gives me hope. Like branches of a tree, my suffering can extend out and reach out towards others. To grow from untreated soil and serve others who will walk the same path. A hand to hold in suffering together.
Featured photo by Soonam Wooeser from Pexels.