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Katherine Davis, Author
kd@katherinedavisauthor.com

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Cancer and Trauma Recovery: Invincibility as Masquerade
Invincibility. It doesn’t exist among humans, but I love invincibility as masquerade, as defensive strategy in cancer and trauma...
davikath8
22 hours ago2 min read
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Healthcare: People Are the Point, Not Disease
We are still mired in disease-centred care. As to being seen as a whole human in the healthcare system, you are out of luck.
davikath8
Mar 194 min read
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The Little Engine that Wouldn’t: Never Try to Cheer up a Cancer Patient
Rule #1 and #1000: Never try to cheer up a cancer patient. Is it really so hard? Letting others be themselves?
davikath8
Mar 12 min read
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PTSD and Me: Wounds into Wings, into Weapons
I didn’t have a PTSD episode while awaiting my colonoscopy to annoy my gastroenterologist, but annoyed he was. He is a busy, important...
davikath8
Jan 272 min read
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Empathy and Defense: Cancer Survivor Superpowers
A survivor of cancer and childhood abuse explains how empathy and defense have become her superpowers, sprung from scarcity.
davikath8
Dec 17, 20243 min read
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Medicine as Transaction: Why I Insist on Being Human
Medicine as transaction. I suppose I am not suited for it. But I ask myself, what are these startling realities calling me to do?
davikath8
Oct 9, 20243 min read
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Clothes Are Not Cancer Treatment: On Learning To Be Vulnerable
A survivor of cancer and childhood abuse learns she is not entirely free of her troubled past
davikath8
Aug 29, 20243 min read
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No Time for Terror: Observations from Provincial Cancer Land
A Canadian cancer patient shares observations from the front lines of an overtaxed and underfunded system
davikath8
Jun 3, 20242 min read
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Having Cancer Again: The Real Work of Love
Looking back, it seems obvious that what happened to me that summer was traumatic. I was a fifteen-year-old receiving chemo for Hodgkin’s...
davikath8
Feb 6, 20242 min read
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Far From Fifteen: Cancer at Age 53
Dread and terror are best dispersed by mundane reality. At the age of 15, as I made the final steps into my isolation room for a bone...
davikath8
Dec 8, 20232 min read
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My Unorthodox Cancer Dream Team
Trauma prepares one for trauma. I have a deep and developed knowledge of suffering. I know what it is and how I want to handle it. I know...
davikath8
Nov 5, 20232 min read
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The Writer on Self-Creation
Not allowed to speak my thoughts or show my feelings, I was driven by my family of origin into art. More like, taken, tied, threatened,...
davikath8
May 22, 20222 min read
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I'm Still Here
Whenever I doubt myself, the continuity of my mind and my body, all I need to do is dance, turning and winding and bending and...
davikath8
May 6, 20221 min read
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Not Today Death
Hold off, Death, I say, Not for me today, Not for the immediate future. I walk away healthy from the cancer clinic. I walk away healthy...
davikath8
Feb 15, 20221 min read
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Death Be Not Proud
Even before I confronted death at age 15, I had tastes, desires, and a temperament that did not fit. I danced, and sang, and immersed...
davikath8
Nov 19, 20212 min read
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How I Came to Voice
I went to college unsure of myself. I had been driven underground by my own family, told again and again I was wrong, ugly, and stupid,...
davikath8
Mar 7, 20212 min read
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