In 1988, Marianne Paget published the Unity of Mistakes: A
Phenomenological Interpretation of Medical Work (Temple) in which she
argued that error is an intrinsic feature in medicineĀan experimental
and uncertain activity. Her subsequent research focused on medical
negligence and on miscommunication and silence a as cause and product
of error in medicine. While pursuing her research on negligence, she
found out that she was an example of it. Chronic back pain that had
been misdiagnosed as muscle spasms turned out to be a symptom of a
rare and fatal cancer that claimed Paget's life in December 1989.
This collection of her personal and professional writings on the
phenomenon of error in medicine chronicles a young scholar's
courageous struggle to make sense of a tragic coincidence.
Discovering that she was living the charges and painful topic that
she had studied so deeply, Paget write poignantly and analytically
until the last week of her life about this uncanny parallel. "It is
very tricky to come to terms with the reality of death without
becoming trapped in that reality," wrote "Tracy" Paget to her
friends. In this book, she describes "the odd way my life began to
mirror my work"; her search for "life rites" when face with tasks
involving wills, last rites, and farewells; and her indomitable and
forthright attempt to remain intensely alive in the face of death. A
Complex Sorrow, her final project, comprises essays, letters, and a
journal recording her last year. Ever critical of the distanced and
dispassionate stance taken in much social analysis, Paget had
experimented with performance as a form for enlivening social science
research. The script for her play, "The Work of Talk," about
communication problems between a physician and his cancer patient, is
also included. Her compelling life-text speaks to those living with
illness and those who care for and about them, as the investigation
and representation of lived experience.
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