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163 Days
163 Days | Hannah Hodgson
3 posts | 1 read | 3 to read
Hannah Hodgson is a seriously ill poet, deploying the surreal and the medical to chart institutional truths vs the individual. 163 days is the length of her longest hospitalisation. Here we join her. At turns funny and hopeful, frightening and moving, this collection is an unusual look at impending mortality and the body/mind as separate selves.
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Bookwomble
163 Days | Hannah Hodgson
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"I treat my body and mind as two separate entities most of the time, my body is an annoying failing bag of meat allowing me to live, whilst my mind is what I consider to be my actual self. Neither my mind nor my annoying meat would be alive without the NHS."
#AccessibilityMatters #NHS

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Bookwomble
163 Days | Hannah Hodgson
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"If you take one thing from this book let it be this: even the dying are alive. If you're a reader with a life limiting diagnosis: I see you. Grieving your body is continuous, sometimes the pain is intolerable, it is never an act of cowardice to talk about your life. You can't control the reactions of others, only what you do with it. Both the physical and mental aspects of our lives are intolerable some days, and that is okay. Ask for help, ⬇️

Bookwomble ... someone is there to listen. You are not a burden." 9mo
marleed Well said❤️ 9mo
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Bookwomble
163 Days | Hannah Hodgson
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An incredibly emotive collection of poems charting Hannah's 163 days on a High Dependency Unit when she was 17 years old, during which time she was diagnosed with a life-limiting set of illnesses. The parts I found hard to read were those extracts from her medical notes in which consultants, doctors and nurses recorded their opinions that Hannah couldn't possibly be as distressed as she was presenting to them, or in which they give their ⬇️

Bookwomble ... impressions without having actually asked what she was experiencing.
This record of confinement in hospital is followed by a series of poems about her life after discharge into community palliative care, which is different in style, but just as emotional.
If it's dark at times, Hannah's personhood shines brightly through. 5⭐ collection. (CW for medical procedures, terminal illness, & co.)
9mo
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