Dying for Attention: A Graphic Memoir of Nursing Home Care

When Susan MacLeod accompanied her 90-year-old mother through a labyrinthine long-term care system it was a nine-year journey navigating a government within a heart in a system without compassion. Her family much like the system erected walls rather than opening arms. She found herself involuntarily placed at the pivot point between her frail elderly mothers need for love and companionship the systems inability to deliver and her brothers indifference. She had also spent three years as a government spokesperson enthusiastically defending the very system she now experienced as brutally cold. MacLeods tone is defined by a gentle self-effacing humour touched by exasperation for the absurdities and the newfound wisdom around expectations. Dying for Attention is the latest memoir in the graphic medicine field shelved alongside My Begging Chart by Keiler Roberts and Tangles by Sarah Leavitt. MacLeod includes helpful tips for communicating with nursing homes as well as background research to provide a larger context for this under-discussed experience.