Edited by: Vernon Rowe, Maryfrances Wagner, David Ray, Judy Ray
If you want to understand a book, don’t open it in the middle. A “patient history,” as you may already know, is how caregivers refer to everything about a patient that can’t be captured in plain numbers: the whens, whats and wheres that may or may not be relevant to what brought them to the office today. It’s their story.
We at RNI place unusual emphasis on patient histories, even more unusual in this age of numbers-driven healthcare (and numbers-driven everything else, too). The founder of RNI, Dr. Vernon Rowe, believes that patient stories are the best way to find root causes of many neurological conditions.
If somebody’s day job deals with people’s stories, you can imagine what his evenings and weekends might produce. In this particular somebody’s case, and depending on the wind, it might be collecting, editing, writing down, or publishing stories. The most recent product of those efforts, and those of his co-editors, is the Whirlybird Anthology of Kansas City Writers, which presents poems, stories, and memoir selections from 95 writers who have lived or worked in the Kansas City area, many of whom have earned widespread recognition in this country and internationally.
“In some of the selections Kansas City itself is subject or backdrop, for example when Richard Rhodes and Hilary Masters recall specifics of their childhood, or when David Owen returns to explore remembered odors, or when poets respond to the influences of jazz. But also found in these pages are subjects and styles as varied as can be imagined—and imagination is not bound by place.”
– from the Preface to the Anthology
We believe in old-fashioned medicine, enhanced by modern technology such as MRI but never replaced by it. Patient history, art, and the art of medicine intertwined.