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Alan Blum

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Casa Juan Diego 2

Casa Juan Diego Portraits

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Alan Blum

About the artist:

Alan Blum is a professor and Gerald Leon Wallace MD Endowed Chair in family medicine at the University of Alabama School of Medicine in Tuscaloosa. A self-taught artist, he has published three books of his sketches and stories of patients, and his artworks have appeared in more than a dozen medical journals and textbooks. Many of his sketches have appeared in Pulse. He is a frequent guest speaker at medical schools in courses in the humanities.

About the artwork:

Alan Blum shared the experience of being in the clinic with his associate physician, Marsha Holleman. She had the following to say about that time and about his sketches.

“Casa Juan Diego is a Catholic Worker house of hospitality, serving new arrivals to the US and Houston, mostly from Latin America. Inspired by Dorothy » Continue Reading.

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Bliss Lomotil blum

Repose

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Alan Blum

About the artist: 

Alan Blum is a professor and Gerald Leon Wallace MD Endowed Chair in family medicine at the University of Alabama School of Medicine in Tuscaloosa. A self-taught artist, he has published three books of his sketches and stories of patients, and his artworks have appeared in more than a dozen medical journals and textbooks. He is a frequent guest speaker at medical schools in courses in the humanities.

About the artwork:

“From my first year of medical school until the last day of my family medicine residency, I kept a visual diary, filling numerous notebooks with clinical vignettes, stories patients shared with me, scraps of overheard dialogue, and pasted-in sketches of my patients in ballpoint pen on index cards or prescription pads with pharmaceutical advertisements. I made this sketch on one of my visits to the patient’s home, where she had asked to be cared for instead of in the hospital. She died at age 72 less than six months after being diagnosed with an adenocarcinoma of the right lung that grew to occupy

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banana peel blum

Banana Peel

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Alan Blum

About the artist: 

Alan Blum is a professor and Gerald Leon Wallace MD Endowed Chair in family medicine at the University of Alabama School of Medicine in Tuscaloosa. A self-taught artist, he has published three books of his sketches and stories of patients, and his artworks have appeared in more than a dozen medical journals and textbooks. He is a frequent guest speaker at medical schools in courses in the humanities.

About the artwork:

“Slip on a banana peelin’ —
They gave me these crutches.
Said I had to use ’em.
I don’t know why.
They’re dangerous things.”

Visuals editor:

Justin Sanders

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long story - blum 2

Long Story

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Alan Blum

About the artist: 

Alan Blum is a Professor and Gerald Leon Wallace MD Endowed Chair in Family Medicine at the University of Alabama School of Medicine in Tuscaloosa. A self-taught artist, he has published three books of his sketches and stories of patients, and his artworks have appeared in more than a dozen medical journals and textbooks. He is a frequent guest speaker at medical schools in courses in the humanities.

About the artwork:

“Aw it’s a long story with me. Spent all my money on my wife when she died. 2 years cancer. Wasn’t able to do anything. Wasn’t able to save her. Spent all my money. All the money I had I spent on her.” Alan Blum recalls: “I vividly remember him, sitting on the edge of the bed at the hospital (when patients could stay there for weeks on end when they couldn’t be sent home alone). He was blind, and he listened faithfully to the radio all day long waiting to hear his name so he could call in and win the jackpot.”

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blum - grief and gratitude

Grief and Gratitude

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Alan Blum

About the artist: 

Alan Blum is a Professor and Gerald Leon Wallace MD Endowed Chair in Family Medicine at the University of Alabama School of Medicine in Tuscaloosa. A self-taught artist, he has published three books of his sketches and stories of patients, and his artworks have appeared in more than a dozen medical journals and textbooks. He is a frequent guest speaker at medical schools in courses in the humanities.

About the artwork:

“This sketch in ballpoint pen on the back of a prescription pad is of a woman I helped care for more than twenty-five years ago. During her first visit to the family-practice clinic, I had listened to her poignant history and had left the room to let her prepare for the physical examination. She was sad but composed. When I returned, however, she was quietly sobbing. ‘Our son committed suicide three years ago,’ she said. ‘We had to file for bankruptcy. The only thing I’m really happy about is my husband stopped drinking and driving for a whole year.’ ”

Visuals editor:

Justin Sanders

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Seeing Patients: The Sketchiest Details

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Alan Blum


Editor’s Note: This week Pulse is once again pleased to present sketches by Alan Blum, a family physician who’s been capturing his patients on paper, with grace and affection, for decades. These quick portraits are taken from a collection entitled Seeing Patients: The Sketchiest Details.

You say you think you got a medicine
to stop my seizures?
I don’t know why,
it’s the only exercise I get.

Well, it’s a long story with me.
Spent all my money on my wife
when she died.
Two years cancer.
Wasn’t able to do anything.
Wasn’t able to save her.
Spent all my money.
All the money I had saved
I spent on her.

You better just go ahead and do it now,’cause I am mentally prepared for y’all to kill me today.

Well, let me tell you a little story.
I had a little pain in my chest here.
I don’t know whether it was gas pain or not.
So the doctor took one of those electro things
with all the wires and he said,
“Well, it look good, but I need more tests.”

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Gentle Men

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Alan Blum

Editor’s Note: This week, Pulse once again presents sketches by Alan Blum, a family physician who for years has been jotting down visual impressions and snippets of conversation as he cares for patients. These sketches go back as far as 35 years, representing patients who have died or with whom he lost touch because of geographic relocation. These drawings are from the recently published book Gentle Men (Firebrand Press).

About the author:

Alan Blum is a professor of family medicine and holds the Gerald Leon Wallace endowed chair in family medicine at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, where he also directs the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society. In 1977 he co-founded Doctors Ought to Care, an international physicians’ organization that pushed organized medicine to become more active in combating the smoking pandemic and the tobacco industry. As a result of these efforts, Dr. Blum received the Surgeon General’s Medallion from Dr. C. Everett Koop. Alan Blum’s sketches and stories have been published in Literature and Medicine, The Pharos, JAMA, Hippocrates, Emory Medicine and The Color Atlas of Family Medicine.

About the sketches:

“These sketches

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