ABSTRACT
Tracings of micro-connections between, say, understandings of treating prosthetic infections and emotional attachments to loved ones can expose the glue that keeps the parts of an apparatus hanging together to meet the demands of society. As tracings, these vignettes about an intensive care unit (ICU) begin to expose the bindings that keep embodied apparatuses glued together so that healthcare continues to function. Dr Belmonte sought to have input into how elderly people may have varying reactions to conventional ICU medical practice, such as responding more slowly to treatment, having a heightened sensitivity to usual medication doses and being more attuned to death and dying. Intimacies of care in the ICU are not solely composed of doctors' orders and nursing records; rather, they are a delicately balanced set of fragile combinations of biomedical decisions, family experiences, emotional attachments, affective atmospheres (Anderson, 2009), communication methods and styles of interaction that signal some of the complexities about bodies, illness and dying.
