MK Czerwiec’s tales of her nursing work on an AIDS unit chart a remarkable episode in the history of medicine. It’s a time of staggering loss but also remarkable change. Through the lives and deaths of individual patients, written and drawn in documentary detail, we see the power dynamic between doctor and patient begin to shift. When cure is not an option, care takes on a new meaning.”
—Alison Bechdel,author of Fun Home
“Rather than the usual medical tales of professional-minded strangers treating faceless victims, Czerwiec’s vignettes become about bonding intimately over suffering and death, watching the community be decimated at the same time as mutual nursing was building connections. Some of the pages are heart-wrenching, and the story has the potential to be supremely depressing, but Czerwiec wrings hope from the honesty of her simple, cheerful cartooning style.”
—Publishers Weekly
“With simple, even amateur panels and wise words, Czerwiec reveals a hospital at the heart of the AIDS crisis. Working as a nurse on a unit for AIDS patients, she and her colleagues helped patients die, celebrated life, and strove to combat the poorly understood disease. Cathartic and clinical, often simultaneously.”
—Library Journal
“[Czerwiec’s] chronicle reminds us that the era was marked as much by courage and compassion as it was by the tragedy of lives lost too soon.”
—Booklist
“With first-person perspectives, simple line-drawings, and straight-forward language, the reader is able to place themselves within this important time of medical history and absorb what occurred, and in this sense it does not only [prompt] the reader to empathise with HIV/AIDS patients but with the health professional narrator, making a contribution to ‘the cultural role of graphic medicine as critique of the medical profession.’ It is not likely that one will ever cry with such empathy over a medical scientific publication, but far more likely that one will be brought to tears over four panels on a page in Czerwiec’s book.”
—The Comics Grid
“The emotional honesty of the comic book is quintessential to the visceral experience of Taking Turns—funny, terrifying and heartbreaking. As much as it informs the reader about the devastation of HIV/AIDS, the book allows the reader to see the disease through the eyes of a person who is literally on the front lines.”
—Windy City Times
“For health care providers, the years that followed [the first official reporting of what would become the AIDS epidemic] were a time of tremendous loss, requiring a new type of caregiving in the face of a disease with no cure. MK Czerwiec, a nurse and the artist-in-residence at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, captures this tragic time with great reverence and attention to detail.”
—Health Affairs
“Taking Turns chronicles [Czerwiec’s] experiences on the evening shift at Unit 371 with patients and other caregivers, often told through voices other than her own, some of the stories funny, some very touching, especially the stories about patients with whom she became close before they died.”
—AU Magazine: America's AIDS Magazine
“Among the takeaways one has after reading MK Czerwiec’s graphic novel Taking Turns is that even in the form of sequential art, the story of the early days of the HIV epidemic is a visceral and heart wrenching experience.”
—The Advocate
“Czerwiec’s role as a writer and illustrator of graphic medicine texts as well as one of the primary theorists and advocates of the genre, means that this, her first single-author entry into the form she helped establish is, like its author, doing the work of defining and practicing this new and compelling literary and artistic form.”
—Women's Review of Books
“Whatever role we play in the health care system, this moving memoir reminds us to look beyond our institutional affiliations and find our place in the wider human community.”
—JAMA
“All of the characters described in [Taking Turns] serve as a reminder of the need for love, compassion, acceptance, and human connectivity when providing care to some of society’s most vulnerable and often ostracized patient populations.”
—Doody's Review Service
“Czerwiec’s work here serves as a valuable reflection on and historical portrait of the AIDS hysteria of the eighties and nineties in America. Combining her memories of that era with her contemporary perspective shows, and makes it seem unbelievable, that a group of people suffered so greatly because of their outsider status as patients with a transmittable, incurable, deadly disease. Taking Turns shows us the cost.”
—The Oral History Review
“Czerwiec . . . does much more than just provide younger readers with a history lesson. For example, she thoughtfully explores what it means to be a healthcare provider. Czerwiec also explores the role of boundaries between healthcare providers and their patients and the need for empathy. These topics, I believe, would resonate with and be useful to students interested in medical or allied health careers. Instructors can use the book as a way to begin these conversations.”
—Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education
“[Czerwiec’s] deft handling of the multiplicity of relationships involved in patient care is the strength of the book, and they are all represented throughout the narrative. Czerwiec does an excellent job of showing how Unit 371’s commitment to care facilitated a depth of intimacy between provider and patient not often found in today’s productivity-driven medical care.”
—Graphic Medicine
★ 12/02/2023
First published in 2017, this memoir carries a new introduction contrasting the 1980s-onset HIV/AIDS epidemic with the recent COVID. In 1993, newly minted nurse Czerwiec (Menopause: A Comic Treatment) finds herself working in Illinois Masonic Medical Center's Unit 371, which provides comprehensive care to their mostly gay men AIDS patients. Heavily staffed, some personnel gay themselves, Unit 371 encourages warm, personal relationships with these stigmatized, mostly terminal patients. Under the mantra of "caring, compassion, competence," pizza from outside, art therapy, and hugging patients all become part of treatment. First surprised but then fully committed to this approach herself, Czerwiec admits, "I thought I'd never find work that was as rewarding." When AIDS drugs improve and the unit closes, Czerwiec begins making comics to express her appreciation—and her sadness that much medical care is not so caring. Her naive-seeming, simply colored figures in spare backgrounds convey the basics of her stories, the way the unit provided the basics of a good life for its patients. VERDICT Czerwiec's wrenching, inspiring story addresses how people should be treated by the medical system and challenges them to treat all patients as in Unit 371. Highly recommended.
12/18/2017
Czerwiec, a registered nurse and cofounder of Graphic Medicine, weaves together multiple threads of nonfiction narratives in this profound graphic memoir of her early years as a nurse and her formative time working at an HIV/AIDS care unit starting in 1994. Around this central strand of a caregiver’s experience, Czerwiec winds personal stories about patients, facts about the day-to-day job of a nurse, and in-depth medical explanations of HIV/AIDS, its effects on health, its treatments, and much more. In the sudden devastation of the AIDS crisis, the LGBTQ people most affected by it were abandoned to one another’s care. Rather than the usual medical tales of professional-minded strangers treating faceless victims, Czerwiec’s vignettes become about bonding intimately over suffering and death, watching the community be decimated at the same time as mutual nursing was building connections. Some of the pages are heart-wrenching, and the story has the potential to be supremely depressing, but Czerwiec wrings hope from the honesty of her simple, cheerful cartooning style. (Mar.)
Reviewer: Janice Phillips, PhD (Rush University Medical Center)
Description: This graphic memoir highlights one nurse's experience caring for patients on an HIV/AIDS unit during the height of the AIDS epidemic during a time when the nation was trying to unravel the details of this mysterious disease. The author very ably combines graphic storytelling to highlight what it is like as a new nurse caring for AIDS patients with providing an inside glimpse of the challenges and concerns of one of our most vulnerable and oftentimes stigmatized patient populations.
Purpose: The purpose of this book, referred to as graphic medicine, is to illustrate a day in the life of a nurse and the AIDS patients she cares for during the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. With candor and immense storytelling ability, the author takes readers on a virtual tour through Unit 371, focusing on some of the unit's most memorable providers and patients. All of the characters described in the memoir serve as a reminder of the need for love, compassion, acceptance, and human connectivity when providing care to some of society's most vulnerable and often ostracized patient populations.
Audience: The book is suitable for a wide array of individuals with an interest in graphic medicine, which is beginning to take off in publishing. While the subject matter is nursing and HIV/AIDS, graphic medicine is a useful tool for communicating a variety of messages in a user-friendly and graphic manner. This type of communication can be particularly helpful in reaching individuals with limited health literacy skills. Audiences who can benefit from a more visual form of messaging may find this a more engaging form of education and communication as well. The author is a registered nurse as well as a known leader in the area of graphic medicine. She uses this format to deliver a variety of important messages with storytelling and artful visualizations.
Features: The book is divided into certain timelines in the life and times of patients and providers on the HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371. The author has carefully selected appropriate text to accompany the illustrations, pausing to educate readers on healthcare issues and treatment modalities for this patient population. The author's ability to narrate and illustrate the joys and challenges of living with HIV/AIDS is impressive. The author provides an inside perspective on the challenges associated with maintaining professional boundaries while providing humanistic and compassionate care to HIV/AIDS patients who are often stigmatized and isolated in society. The depictions are colorful and are helpful in educating the public on HIV/AIDS in an engaging and informative manner.
Assessment: The use of graphic medicine is beginning to take hold in the U.S. This book is well done and can serve as a useful tool in educating others on how to construct similar books and messaging. While graphic medicine is still emerging as a communication tool, this book embodies the true essence of graphic medicine and could serve as an exemplar for future publications of this kind.