“Disease is the dark side of life. Everyone who is born has dual citizenship, in the realm of the healthy and in the realm of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obligated, at least for a while, to identify himself as a citizen of that other place.” (Susan Sontag, Illness as metaphor)
Based on my clinical experience, and from an ironic point of view, I explore the exposure and dehumanization associated with the experience of illness. I use sun exposure as a metaphor for the physical and/or psychological vulnerability and exposure to which patients are subjected in the clinical context.
ICD-11, an acronym for the International Classification of Diseases in its 11th edition, is a classification created to standardize medical information, which is crucial for the production of statistics in the field of public health. However, its widespread use has contributed to the dehumanization of medicine by reducing the complexity of each patient to a simple numerical code.
Pascual Ovalle
