Headlands Center for the Arts

Artist Statement

I am a physician, I am a patient, and I write. I use words to dissect muscle and nerves and attempt to describe inexplicable things: what it means to have a body, how that body falls apart, how medicine can be miraculous (if you have access to it). Though my essays are influenced by my work as a physician, I lean away from the traditional way that doctors write about medicine: by regurgitating patient stories and presenting them as interesting pathologies rather than as people. I share my own story as physician, as patient, as person, to process my history of illness and disability, to better understand the physical and emotional toll that medicine has on physicians, and to put words to things that all physicians and all patients understand but do not discuss.

While At Headlands

At Headlands, I will be working on a manuscript that explores medicine and its complicated relationship with the body. My memoir in essays uses my body – what illness did to it, how physicians treated it, and how I neglected it even as I learned how to care for others – in an attempt to understand how our healthcare system strips doctors and patients of our humanity. While some essays will be more journalistic in nature, presenting historical information about healthcare and other data in easily digestible ways, others will utilize more poetic language to describe illness, disability, and the body. Part of this book’s foundation rests upon the scholarly work on ableism and racism in medicine. It also converses with the work of disabled and chronically ill activists. By juxtaposing historical and contemporary issues, evidence-based data and our emotional responses to illness, prose and poetics, I hope to help physicians and patients learn to speak each other’s languages.

Gum, 2020

Degeneration, 2024

In The Blood, 2022

 

Diana Cejas’ Additional Media:

1. Apnea, Amnesia – https://tahomaliteraryreview.com/selections/apnea-amnesia/

2. convalescence triptych – https://losangelesreview.org/convalescence-triptych-
diana-cejas/

3. National Baptist Hymnal – https://iowareview.org/blog/national-baptist-hymnal/