Med Anthropol Q
December 2024
This article explores how acuteness is experienced by people with endometriosis in Finland. Drawing on in-depth interviews as well as anonymous written endometriosis stories, we trace instances when the sense of chronicity and cyclicality of endometriosis is disrupted by a possibility of risk to life. These instances include when endometriosis tissue grows in unanticipated and aggressive ways, when medical interventions lead to unexpected complications or medications raise concerns about a gradually developing risk, and when endometriosis diagnosis becomes a catch-all category that could mask the onset of a life-threatening condition.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe article explores how sensations of pain are turned into embodied knowledge in endometriosis, a chronic gynaecological illness characterized by persistent, possibly paralysing pain. While previous studies have shown how people with endometriosis struggle to achieve accurate diagnosis and effective treatment, we examine the ways in which some of these difficulties are rooted in the complexities of embodied experiences of endometriosis pain and the challenges of translating the sensed patterns and shifts in pain into a language acknowledged within a clinical setting. Building on a phenomenologically inspired approach to chronic pain and drawing on interviews with people diagnosed with endometriosis in Finland, we examine how our interlocutors use their embodied sensations of pain to adapt to the evolving biomedical and lived surroundings in which their pain is evaluated and managed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe multibillion-dollar fertility industry promotes standardization in fertilization laboratories. Transnational pharmaceutical and biotechnological giants distribute a wide range of fertility products, from embryo culture mediums and incubator technologies to add-ons such as time-lapse embryo monitoring. These technologies are designed to standardize and automate knowledge production regarding embryonic viability.
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