Return by me

I interviewed a few days ago a Bedouin lady in her thirties, who complained of gernalized pain and inability to move. Coming from a biologial approach, I asked the questions of when the pain was worst, where it started, how long it lasted, and its nature. I pondered all the possibile organic causes of a 10 year history of pain and looked at the lab results that were normal.

"She perhaps suffers from depression with a major psychotic episode. She had lost three childen and her husband married another woman," said the psychiatrist,"You missed it. This is what I call the kulo buga syndrome (it all hurts, in Arabic)." Back in the days, before having started medical school, I met an Um Unis whol also talked to my mother when I was a 6 year old. She, too, was a fallaha, and she too complained of generalized pain.

Western medicine takes me to the far edges of my mind. And then comes in someone who speaks Arabic, and reminds me of a culture I had long left behind, in order to embrace the fields of mind and cognition.

I cannot diagnose yet, but in the process of my own medical inadequacy, my patient brought me back...home. She was right- kulo buga. (It all hurts.)Which Western medical textbooks talk about the kulo buga syndrome?