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I Knew a Woman: The Experience of the Female Body

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Cortney Davis, nurse practitioner, poet, creative nonfiction writer, has written a remarkable book about the science and poetry of healing, about protocol and ritual, gnosis and diagnosis, and, above all else, the blossoming of hope. The laying on of hands.

Her book is a lyrical manifesto of Carl Jung's observation that "every personality has a story. Derangement happens when the story is denied. To heal, the patient had to rediscover his story." A good nurse is one who knows that it's just as important to hear her patients' stories as it is to palpate abdomens or check reflexes. In the exam room, that sacred space, four women tell Davis their stories. Like a good novel, Davis builds believable characters using dialogue and humor and dramatic scenes and then weaves her own story into theirs.

Healing literally means "wholeness," with the words "holy" and "heal" both deriving from the Anglo-Saxon "haelen," meaning "whole." Davis brings her rejected and discarded patients into the circle, and listens with an inward ear for those parts of them that have been silenced. Healing is restoration of communication within one's self, a restoration of balance, a willingness to change. Davis is a healer in the true sense of the word.

In I Knew a Woman Cortney Davis leads us where every woman fears to tread; through the swing doors and down the corridors to an often far-to-busy-to-see-us women's clinic reception desk. The poorer the clinic the more tatty and out of date the magazines, scattered like bird seed to keep our minds occupied while we wait. But there is rarely any item in them to calm the nervousness that women feel on checking in. After the wait your name is called, you go to a room, undress to wait again. Nothing unlocks the nervousness that numbs the mind. Nothing that is, until Davis or one of the legion of nurses like her enters the room. But what is it that these nurses really do for women? I think the answer is that as much as we open and give them, they receive us as complete women.
Long ago Davis honed the art of nursing her complete patient and over the last decade she has also practiced the art of writing. In her poetry and prose she gives us back ourselves, a mirror image of our womanhood. See, she seems to say, see, this is you and this is all of us, do not be afraid.
Davis is a poet as well as a prose writer and in I Knew a Woman her prose has reached a new level of lyrical movement. During the late fifties, as medical knowledge and science began to explode the person inside the patient was often getting left behind. Dr. A.F. Clark-Kennedy of the London Hospital wrote a small book called Patients as People; Medicine in its Human Setting. (Faber and Faber London 1957). He wove the stories of patients and their disease together showing young doctors and nurses how each related to the other. It was not until the seventies that physician writers such as Richard Selzer invited us to look again and remember patients as people. Davis has claimed her place alongside these two fine literate physicians as a writer of such caliber. I Knew a Woman is a book to be read by everyone; teachers, nurses, physicians and woman patients. Davis led us into the clinic with her poetic prose and we leave I Knew a Woman with a stronger and more open heart.
Muriel Murch
Author Journey in the Middle of the Road.
Living with Literature community radio.

Thank you Cortney Davis for I Knew a Woman, The Experience of the Female Body. The book is at once, scientific clinical knowledge and poetry of anatomical place. Two bodies of work are interwoven in Davis's wonderful book. Beautiful. Read it to know more about yourself and read it to know more about others through these intimate and mysteriously woven portraits. A must read for anyone - and especially nurses, physicians, and other health care professionals - who are curious about human beings. This book is revealing.

I have recommended this fine, beautifully-written book to all my friends, and to all my colleagues in the health-care profession. I tell them that though this book stitches together the stories of a nurse-practioner and four of her women patients (fictional composites, to protect the privacy of the author's real patients), it is a book that reaches beyond the subject of the female experience in the medical world. Cortney Davis writes compellingly about humanity--about the vulnerability of both the human body and the human spirit. In addition to her obvious gifts as a writer, she offers the reader the gift of her strong, sensitive spirit.

I have recommended this fine, beautifully-written book to all my friends, and to all my colleagues in the health-care profession. I tell them that though this book stitches together the stories of a nurse-practioner and four of her women patients (fictional composites, to protect the privacy of the author's real patients), it is a book that reaches beyond the subject of the female experience in the medical world. Cortney Davis writes compellingly about humanity--about the vulnerability of both the human body and the human spirit. In addition to her obvious gifts as a writer, she offers the reader the gift of her strong, sensitive spirit.

In I Knew a Woman Cortney Davis leads us where every woman fears to tread; through the swing doors and down the corridors to an often far-to-busy-to-see-us women's clinic reception desk. The poorer the clinic the more tatty and out of date the magazines, scattered like bird seed to keep our minds occupied while we wait. But there is rarely any item in them to calm the nervousness that women feel on checking in. After the wait your name is called, you go to a room, undress to wait again. Nothing unlocks the nervousness that numbs the mind. Nothing that is, until Davis or one of the legion of nurses like her enters the room. But what is it that these nurses really do for women? I think the answer is that as much as we open and give them, they receive us as complete women.
Long ago Davis honed the art of nursing her complete patient and over the last decade she has also practiced the art of writing. In her poetry and prose she gives us back ourselves, a mirror image of our womanhood. See, she seems to say, see, this is you and this is all of us, do not be afraid.
Davis is a poet as well as a prose writer and in I Knew a Woman her prose has reached a new level of lyrical movement. During the late fifties, as medical knowledge and science began to explode the person inside the patient was often getting left behind. Dr. A.F. Clark-Kennedy of the London Hospital wrote a small book called Patients as People; Medicine in its Human Setting. (Faber and Faber London 1957). He wove the stories of patients and their disease together showing young doctors and nurses how each related to the other. It was not until the seventies that physician writers such as Richard Selzer invited us to look again and remember patients as people. Davis has claimed her place alongside these two fine literate physicians as a writer of such caliber. I Knew a Woman is a book to be read by everyone; teachers, nurses, physicians and woman patients. Davis led us into the clinic with her poetic prose and we leave I Knew a Woman with a stronger and more open heart.
Muriel Murch
Author Journey in the Middle of the Road.
Producer Living with Literature for community radio.

I loved this book! As a newspaper journalist I read and review books regularly and recognize an outstanding one when it comes along.

I Knew A Woman reads like a novel, though every bit of information about the female body, and what goes on behind the curtain in an exam room is factual. In it we follow four characters through a busy women's health clinic, similar to the one at the Connecticut Hospital where the Ms.Davis works. She uses the characters (as a vehicle) to explain in detail the inner workings of the female body, and the medical procedures we endure in the name of preventive health care. Ms. Davis demystifies each procedure -- including life-saving treatments women undergo when our bodies turn against us - the equipment used, and the technical jargon that gathers in the air above our heads."

I Knew A Woman is a book for friends to recommend to friends, for big sisters to give to little sisters, for mothers and daughters and grandmothers. It is positively a "must read" for every teenager and adult living in a female body. I highly recommend this book to anyone, male or female, in the care giving business. There is much to learn here about treating each patient as an individual rather than a number or the "broken leg" or "laceration" or "hysterectomy" in room 2.

Perhaps the best reason for reading "I Knew A Woman: The Experience of the female Body" is expressed by Ms. Davis herself in the introduction to the book. "What happens to a woman within the privacy of an exam room is crucially significant. That woman is our mother or sister, our wife or lover, our daughters, our granddaughters, ourselves. What happens to her happens to us all."

This is not a book to be overlooked. Jean Sands

As a male reader, let me stress that this is not "a book for women, written by a woman." This book is about the human act of caring, and giving care, to humans who need it. A few years ago, my sister fell gravely ill, an experience that cannot but leave one with painful memories. But as I visited my comatose sister in ICU, I was struck by the quality of care by the nursing staff -- care which is not and cannot be valued in dollars. Male nurses and female nurses alike went out of their ways to make Peggy as comfortable as possible, and to assure her family and friends that they were doing everything they knew how to do to get her well. Davis's book is about that kind of dedication, which springs from the heart of a special breed of human -- the nurse and the nurse practitioner. It details the stories of four women of all social strata who find themselves at the mercy of caregivers, primarily Ms. Davis herself, and who receive a gift that lets them emerge richer than before the experience. It is a dramatic book filled with high and low points, humor, despair, and love. While the book does educate you about certain illnesses and their treatment or prevention, it is not the Merck Manual or Gray's Anatomy -- it is a profound expression of love that Davis obviously feels toward her patients and toward all humankind. It is a book for women, certainly; but it is a book for all men who love their wives and lovers and sisters and daughters and mothers.

This is a great book. I read it while in school to be a nurse practitioner and during the tough times it was very inspirational for me. I feel like Courtney Davis was in the same clinic as me. I gave it to my mom to read so she could understand better what I'm doing.
One of the best books I've ever read! :)

This book is a must-read, not just for nurses, but for all caregivers, and that includes almost everybody, certainly all women. "We are sisters, all of us, no matter our heritage or our destination. We walk the narrow edge between disability and physical health, between despair and strength. We share the ever-changing environment of the female body." Cortney Davis' I Knew a Woman is literature in the grandest tradition-it educates as well as delights. She weaves the stories of her patients' journeys toward knowledge and acceptance with her personal story of discovery. Along the way she enlightens readers about a wide range of female experiences. We learn a lot from Davis' patients, Renee, Lila, Joanna and Eleanor. While we may not share their specific physical problems, we share, as sisters, their feelings, emotions and responses. Thanks, Ms. Davis.