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Retired professor promotes healing message about incurable diseases

Oct. 15, 2008

By Amanda Ochoa
Reporter

Through her own personal story of fighting an incurable illness, retired Baylor professor Dr. Kay Toombs hopes to promote healing even in the absence of a cure, through her lecture "Living at the Boundary: Healing and Incurable Illness."

Toombs was a professor for the department of philosophy for 13 years, and she created the first medical humanities course available for students at Baylor.

Although Toombs retired, she continues to lecture important healthcare issues to students.

"I hope that those who go to the lecture will have a greater understanding of healing and care-giving for patients living with incurable illnesses," Toombs said.

Toombs will reflect on her own experiences living with multiple sclerosis and her first-hand experience with a chronic neurological illness.

In the lecture, Toombs will discuss the significant last six months she shared with her husband. Her husband, who was diagnosed with cancer, also had a fatal illness.

Toombs said it is important for her to send a certain message through her lecture.

"While an illness has no cure there, there is still the need to understand the challenges that those patients will still face," Toombs said. "I hope to educate the audience on how important the personal, professional and emotional relationships are between patients and healthcare professionals."

Toombs is an award-winning author of many publications. Her well-known books include The Meaning of Illness, The Handbook of Phenomenology and Medicine and her latest work as a co-author for the book Disability: The Social, Political and Ethical Debate, which is not yet published.

In her book, The Meaning of Illness, Kay Toombs made clear the frequent mismatch between physicians' and patients' emotional perspectives, according to Eric J. Cassel's article titled, "Doctors and Their Feelings: A Pharmacology."

Cassie Morgan, Allen senior, medical humanities student assistant and entertainment chair for Relay for Life, said she believes Dr. Toombs is the perfect lecturer for the annual Medical Humanities lecture.

Morgan knows that Dr. Toombs' professional background and knowledge of medical humanities, healthcare and chronic illnesses will give the audience an informative, reliable and insightful lecture that will target important, yet largely unspoken-of issues in the medical field.

"I am looking forward to hearing about her life and learning from someone who is a patient," Morgan said. "She will give students in the medical world a different and open perspective they probably wouldn't have received from the outside."

Morgan believes that this lecture will primarily show premedical, pre-healthcare and social work students the wonderful, humane side to the medical field.

Morgan said she feels that through Dr. Toombs' lecture, healthcare professionals will realize that it is important to listen to their patients and to see them as individuals and not just victims of an incurable illness.

Dr. Kay Toombs will give her lecture, "Living at the Boundary: Healing and Incurable Illness" today in room D109 Baylor Sciences Building at 4:30 p.m. as an important contribution to this year's Medical Humanities Annual Lecture.

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