Dying for Attention: A Graphic Memoir of Nursing Home Care

Dying for Attention: A Graphic Memoir of Nursing Home Care by MacLeod, Susan. paperback edition. ISBN: 9781772620610.

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.