title: Wolf-living with SLE in a novel.
abstract: Living with SLE is a major task for the patients and their social environment. In modern health care, quality of life is increasingly incorporated as an important outcome. Studying novels about illness is a new method of exploring quality of life in patients with an illness. In this paper, we use the novel A tribe of women by Hervé Bazin as data to explore how a patient with SLE gives meaning to her illness and how her social environment reacts toward the illness and its treatment. We find that the novel-probably the only one where SLE is a major subject-offers a rich set of data on "living with SLE". Our findings may be instrumental in encouraging health care providers to explore quality of life in patients with SLE, incorporating self-management in order to improve their quality of life, and in teaching medical students about "medical humanities".
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Psychology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands, a.a.kaptein@lumc.nl.
authors.forename: Ad A
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Kaptein
authors.forename: Joshua M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Smyth
authors.forename: Richard S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Panush
mesh_terms: D000203:Activities of Daily Living; D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008180:Lupus Erythematosus, Systemic; D008513:Medicine in Literature; D011788:Quality of Life; D012648:Self Care