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The Value of the Patient Voice: A Review of Salt in My Soul by Mallory Smith

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2022

Michelle LaBonte*
Affiliation:
History of Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
*
Corresponding author. Email: labontemichelle@gmail.com

Extract

Mallory Smith’s posthumously published book, Salt in My Soul: An Unfinished Life, is an insightful and moving account of one young woman’s experience living with a chronic, often invisible, illness.1 Mallory was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis (CF) at age three and began writing in a journal when she was 15. According to those close to her, Mallory wrote consistently over the span of 10 years, until shortly before she died at age 25 from complications related to a double lung transplant. Much of what Mallory included in her journal was too difficult for her to share with family and friends while she was alive, yet she hoped that her writing would one day “offer insight for people living with, or loving someone with, chronic illness.” (page x) As Mallory explained, “I want to create a piece so moving that people are in disbelief. And I want it to be like handing people a pair of glasses, giving them a way of seeing something they didn’t even realize they weren’t seeing.” (page 291) Shortly before Mallory died, she shared the password to her 2,500-page journal with her mother, along with instructions for how to select excerpts for what would become Salt in My Soul.

Type
Review Article
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

Notes

1. Smith M, Salt in My Soul: An Unfinished Life (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2019).

2. Porter, R. The patient’s view: doing medical history from below. Theory and Society 1985;14:175–98CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

3. Anonymous. Living with CF while Black. CF Roundtable: A Newsletter for Adults Who Have Cystic Fibrosis. 2020(Summer):2223 Google Scholar., page 22.

4. Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, 2017, https://www.cff.org/node/1326.

5. Will Battersby, “Salt in My Soul,” (Giant Pictures, 2022).

6. Smith, Salt in My Soul: An Unfinished Life., page 299.; Eric Boodman, “A Fitting Memorial: Superbug Treatment Named for the Patient Who Inspired Its Discovery,” STAT, January 23 2020.