MY COMA DREAMS tells a true story of love at the dividing line between life and death.  An HIV-positive jazz musician is rushed by his partner to St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan. A mild cough has become a massive infection, shutting down every organ in his body. The doctors put him into a medically-induced coma. Over the next two months, he enters a highly personal dream world, full of vivid experiences of confinement and release, of surreal comedy and ineffable beauty. He finds himself in hushed cathedrals; trapped in a cage beside jazz legend Thelonious Monk; careening through the night in a runaway van; dancing the tango in an impossibly luxurious airplane. Meanwhile, his partner fights through panic and despair to try to reach out to him across the gulf of consciousness, while negotiating the real-world complexities of his medical care. MY COMA DREAMS is jazz theater: theater propelled by music, words, song, and images in fluid and ever-changing combinations.

For More Information visit: http://www.mycomadreams.com

There will be two performances of MY COMA DREAMS: times will be announced as soon as they become available.

Narrative Medicine Rounds are lectures, readings, and performances presented by scholars, clinicians, academics, writers, and artists engaged in work at the interface between narrative and health care. Rounds are held on the first Wednesday of each month (September to May) from 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm in the Columbia University Medical Center Faculty Club, followed by a reception. Rounds are free and open to the public. Students, staff, faculty, patients, friends, and interested others are warmly welcome to join us.

For More Information visit: http://narrativemedicine.org

A panel of admissions staff  from Columbia’s varied schools, including the Business School, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the school of Journalism, and the School of Continuing Education, will discuss the attributes they seek in successful applicants to these top-tier programs. Topics include academic requirements, advice on writing stand-out personal essays, and creating a desirable application package.

Sponsored by the Columbia University School of Continuing Education Postbaccalaureate Studies and Graduate Programs

The Program in Narrative Medicine will be presenting Theater of War at the Miller Theatre on the Columbia University campus on Tuesday, April 5 at 7pm.

This performance of Sophocles’, “Ajax,” marks the first major public performance in New York of this groundbreaking theatrical experience. Tickets will be free to the public, and the performance will be followed by a panel discussion with audience participation.

R.S.V.P. at the Narrative Medicine website to reserve your seat: http://www.narrativemedicine.org/programs/tow.html

Author of Babies in Bottles: Twentieth Century Visions of Reproductive Technology, and Liminal Lives: Imagining the Human Frontiers of Biomedicine, Squier is professor of English and women’s studies at Penn State.  She speaks on her latest work, graphic fiction of illness and disability.

Narrative Medicine Rounds are lectures or readings presented by scholars, clinicians, or writers engaged in work at the interface between narrative and health care. Rounds are usually held on the first Wednesday of each month from 5 to 7 pm in the Columbia University Medical Center Faculty Club, followed by a reception. Rounds are free and open to the public. Students, staff, faculty, patients, friends, and interested others are warmly welcome to join us.

Romm reads from her acclaimed book The Mercy Papers: A Memoir in Three Weeks, written about the three weeks prior to her mother’s death.  In a front cover review, the New York Times Book review called it “a furious blaze of a book.”

Narrative Medicine Rounds are lectures or readings presented by scholars, clinicians, or writers engaged in work at the interface between narrative and health care. Rounds are usually held on the first Wednesday of each month from 5 to 7 pm in the Columbia University Medical Center Faculty Club, followed by a reception. Rounds are free and open to the public. Students, staff, faculty, patients, friends, and interested others are warmly welcome to join us.