St Pantaleimon: the patients’ experience
Joan Burkitt-Gray
I wanted to give an idea of the patients’ experience of eye treatments. Not just the skill and care and necessary confidence of the surgeon, but also what it can look like from the point of view of the person on the other end of the scalpel.
I chose an icon of Panteleimon the healer, a Roman-era saint trained in medicine. To my surprise, I found the Romans were able to do eye surgery.
So, in honour of this and of my own experiences, particularly of my eye surgeon approaching me with a sharp-pointed “scalpel” after major glaucoma surgery, saying “I’ll just take some more stitches out of your eyeball”, I’ve shown St Panteleimon holding a sharp pointy “scalpel”. I’ve painted the salves – healing potions – in his red medicine chest with some of the colours of drugs and experiences of eye treatment: orange for examination drops, green for laser light, and blue for pressure-measuring.
His robes are the colour of scrubs.
The images below show the painting of St Pantaleimon in various states of finish. This represents the fact that Joan broke her back after tripping on a step that she could not see, due to having a visual field defect as a result of advanced glaucoma. The images below show how far she had progressed with her icon paintings before the fall, and her fractured progress due to the unseen risks associated with her visual impairment.
Work in progress 1
Work in progress 2
