[If narrative medicine draws inspiration from Dante.]

A doctor patient relationship is made of stories. The story the patient tells the doctor and the one the physician uses to explain the patient's illness. Nowadays we call it "narrative medicine". The poet Dante can be a guide for our journey from the relationship of cure and care to the comprehension of pain and loneliness. With him we can ascent the hill of purgatory searching for healing or, it seems obvious, for paradise. We learn that we will be able to enter there only if we attribute the right meaning to the story of our life, which includes inevitably: dying. The knowledge of dying is not in contradiction to health, indeed it may be the crowning glory of a healthy life, lived in it's fullness.