Some of Her Parts

Some of Her Parts was inspired in large part by my struggle with chronic illness.

As is too often the case with young and otherwise healthy patients, doctors had been comfortable writing off my myriad symptoms as either unrelated or no big deal for 3-4 years. It wasn't until after I’d lost 20lbs in three weeks, and could barely stand without getting lightheaded, that I finally received my diagnosis of Crohn's Disease. I’m now very happy to say that I’m responding well to my treatment, and most days I’m not in terrible pain.

But I’ve been a filmmaker for much longer than 3 or 4 years. And I badly wanted to figure out a way to marry my work with the truth of my illness.

I’d been so terrified of allowing this disease to define me, that I was reluctant to even mention my diagnosis to anyone outside my close circle. Publicly exposing my struggle felt like allowing it to do exactly that. Yet in choosing to hide my disease, I couldn't define it myself. Secrecy, it turned out, was the very concession I never wanted to make.

So early last year, we drove up through a blizzard to Burlington, Vermont to make Some of Her Parts. It's a deeply personal movie, but it’s also about the much greater risk of dehumanization in medicine at large, and the sacrifices everyone who struggles with chronic pain and illness are so familiar with making. See, I'd found myself thinking a lot about sacrifice.

Whether it was trading away serious pain and inflammation for large hospital bills, or just giving up vegetables for an easier time on the toilet, it seemed like successful treatment inherently demanded sacrifice. What were the limits? How much would someone sacrifice for their health?

Would someone trade their entire body for much longer life? Would that person still even be human? In Some of Her Parts, people can make that choice. But perhaps they wouldn't need to if we promote healthcare which treats the whole sum of a person, and not only their parts.

– Abie