Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Examined Illness: A Philosopher's Confrontation with Deadly Disease

The Examined Illness: A Philosopher's Confrontation with Deadly Disease

Moellendorf, Darrel

Hardcover

Series: Global Health Humanities

PhilosophyBiographies GeneralCancer

ISBN10: 1835953247
ISBN13: 9781835953242
Publisher: Intellect (UK)
Published: Sep 28 2026
Pages: 248
Language: English

Being a patient is part of being alive. Sooner or later most of us go through it. Disease and serious illness often strike quite randomly, and when they do, we quickly become subject to the impersonal forces of biochemistry and pharmacology. We rarely think about this beforehand and are often totally unprepared for it when it happens. Suddenly there we are, subject to a standard treatment protocol.

Darrel Moellendorf learned this by experience during a month confined to a solitary and sterile hospital room where I received a life-saving stem cell transplant. His room was somebody's workspace, his schedule was somebody's work routine, his immune system was systematically crushed, and his prognosis was out of his hands. There was no assurance that it would all work out for the best.

Having spent 30 years teaching philosophy to college students, He was facing the biggest test of all, perhaps the final exam. These are his reflections before, during and after treatment, written in real-time. In his words, 'my brain was sometimes addled by the chemotherapy that sapped my energy and destroyed my immune system, but I wrote out of the conviction that living well includes living well with disease, and eventually living well facing death.'

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