The Yale Journal for
Humanities in Medicine
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Essays
Grave Error
Brian T. Maurer
“This is the third time we’ve had our son to this office in the past four months for the same thing, Doc. We’ve got to get to the bottom of this.”
The father speaks in a concerned voice: anxious, not angry. I acknowledge him with a nod and continue my questions.
“These spells that he gets—they typically occur while he’s at school?” ...
March 30, 2008
You Don’t Have To Be Famous: How To Write Your Life Story by Steve Zousmer.
Reviewed by Laurie Rosenblatt, M.D.
Writing an autobiography (or an autobiographical essay) can be daunting. But writing your story can lend pattern to the formless chronicle of everyday life, share clinical or personal lessons learned, put painful events into perspective, and even bring back purpose and direction to a life set adrift by illness. In this witty, and tough-minded book, Steve Zousmer begins by telling us what he will not do. He will not act like a teacher in a creative writing workshop. He will not impose drills and exercises or urge us to read the polished prose from famous authors. He will not promise magical solutions. ...
March 27, 2008
MACSPIT, DUKE OF YORK
Robert S. Rosson, M.D.
Kierek: Who goes there?
Kelley: ‘Tis Kelley, come to relieve thee.
Kierek: Thou art welcome. The cold doth rattle my bones whilst I watch over our lord’s “hunting”.
Kelley: With whom doth he consort this time?
Kierek: ‘Tis the beautiful Kristen, who doth pleasure the Duke.
Kelley: Oh, it’s a mighty price to pay for such sport—but well worth it I’m told. ...
March 26, 2008
Bridge and Tunnel by John Hennessy
Reviewed by Laurie Rosenblatt, M.D.
In this first book, Bridge and Tunnel, Hennessy’s rich language—look at the skilled and effective repetition, “and walked," “He walked,” “He walked”—takes us through the industrial landscape of New Jersey with humor, heart, and a sharp eye. He introduces us to the neighborhood and to the local characters, “Mike Devlin” “Pan in Arkansas.” Here is “Dr. Swann” ...
March 16, 2008
The Uses of Empathy: A Medical Student’s Perspective
James K. Fleming
I was half asleep in the library when my trauma pager flashed "Red Alert: female, motor vehicle collision, estimated time of arrival - ten minutes."
I raced to the Emergency Department. In the trauma bay I found a young woman covered with abrasions and contusions; she had been thrown from her vehicle. The resuscitation team, wearing blue non-latex gloves, surrounded her bed quickly. They intubated, administered intravenous fluids, inserted a Foley catheter, and ordered portable X-Rays. As suddenly as it had arrived, the ocean of blue gloves ebbed in all directions until I alone was left. ...
March 8, 2008
Across the Threshold
Brian T. Maurer
Once, when I was a teenager waiting in a hospital hallway, I chanced to see a white-coated woman doctor pull a medical chart from a box mounted on the wall outside an exam room door. She leafed through its pages before she knocked briefly on the door and stepped into the room. I saw her face brighten, and heard her voice croon a greeting before the door closed behind her, sealing doctor and patient inside. Although I could hear muffled voices, I couldn’t make out the words. But I was certain that whatever they were talking about carried great significance, like the words of a penitent to his priest in the confessional. ...
March 3, 2008
The Return of the I-Man II
Robert S. Rosson, M.D.
Don Imus recently returned to radio and TV as I predicted on these ethereal pages. This demonstrates America’s affinity for redemption as well as the primacy of commercial advertising in our society. I now predict that one of his early guests will be President George W. Bush and that the interview will go something like this: ...
February 14, 2008
Watermark by Jacquelyn Pope
Reviewed by Laurie Rosenblatt, M.D.
Watermark by Jacquelyn Pope won the 2004 Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize. Pope’s poetry is striking, direct, and true. ...
February 11, 2008
As You Like It
Brian T. Maurer
Although she’s seventeen, she’s here with her father. Actually, it was his idea that she come in for an evaluation, even though she’s feeling a bit better today. She had a harrowing week, beginning last Saturday evening. It all started with the onset of her menses. ...
February 4, 2008
Re Verse: Essays on Poetry and Poets
by David R. Slavitt
Reviewed by Laurie Rosenblatt, M.D.
The author of more than eighty books, David Slavitt publishes translations, poetry, novels, and memoir. His prose book, Re Verse, is a powerful collection of essays about poets and poetry. It treats familiar work in a fresh way that illuminates new aspects of each poet’s life and work and opens up poems and poets that may be a bit more difficult. ...
February 4, 2008
The Beauty of Clinical Medicine
Brian T. Maurer
“She coughed up blood this morning. When my son came running down the stairs with the news, I thought, ‘Yeah, right.’ But then my daughter showed me the phlegm in the tissue. I got a little panicky when I saw the blood.” In spite of the concerned look on this father’s face, he remains calm as he continues his story. ...
January 14, 2008
Endocenter: A Tragedy in One Act
Robert S. Rosson, M.D.
A GI endoscopy suite in a two-story medical building in suburban Bloomfield, Indiana. Time: the present. Dr. Cash, dressed in a blue operating gown, is in the procedure room, eyes fixed on the monitor into which he has patched CNBC. Enter Lucille in surgical scrubs. ...
January 14, 2008
The Birth of Humanism
Walter A. Borden, M.D.
There is a working relationship between psychiatry and our justice system. The state of mind of individuals in criminal and civil proceedings is often an important issue. But that relationship has been problematic, politicized, stigmatized, confused and confusing to professionals and public alike. ...
December 19, 2007
Thirty Minutes
Kristen Georgi
The waiting room of the clinic is filled beyond capacity. John takes the chart out of the file holder and goes to the waiting room to get his first patient of the afternoon, a 54-year-old man complaining of stomach pain. He is on medication for acid reflux, but it isn’t helping him. He is also on an antipsychotic for schizophrenia. He has no family, was homeless for about a year but just got a place to live, he says. John’s face doesn’t register any reaction as he listens to the details of this patient’s life. He only allows himself to be concerned with the health of the patient’s body. ...
December 19, 2007
Capital Punishment on Trial
Robert S. Rosson, M.D.
TV ANCHORWOMAN: Welcome everyone to CourtTV. As many of you know we have been following the trial of Capital Punishment, indicted for multiple crimes including “cruel and unusual punishment.” After three months of testimony a three judge federal circuit court panel has found the defendant guilty as charged of four out of five counts, and today we take you live into the courtroom, where Chief Judge Moses Solomon is about to pronounce sentence. ...
December 1, 2007
Initial Shock
Brian T. Maurer
The boy, now fourteen, has come in for a routine physical examination, accompanied by his grandmother. The old woman, a slender graying little slip of a thing, assumed guardianship of the boy when her daughter—the boy’s mother—died six years ago. I never learned the exact cause of her death—funny how we clinicians always focus on the event that marks a patient’s passing—but I do remember her face. After all, here it is again in the form of an old woman, regarding me from the chair across the room. ...
December 1, 2007
Caring for Mother: A Daughter's Long Goodbye
by Virginia Stem Owens
Reviewed by Howard Spiro
This heart-rending account of a daughter’s reaction to her mother’s growing dementia will help you share the agony of someone with mental illness. But worse, as her mother was losing her mind, the daughter-author, Virginia Owens, was threatened with losing her sight to glaucoma. Yet she allows no self-pity in her account, only the torment of trying to make sense out of a mind coming from an increasingly distorted brain. Owens finds some consolation in trying to ferret out from her mother’s increasingly garbled words some metaphors of understanding, some core of reality. ...
November 8, 2007
Collateral Damage
Walter Borden, M.D.
Joe was tough, a highly decorated state trooper for 20 plus years and thought he’d seen everything. He’d been shot at, shot, rammed by a car, seen the gore and death of countless accidents and domestic violence. He was tough, and one of the best at corralling the bad guys. ...
November 6, 2007
Why Not Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants?
Howard Spiro, M.D.
A deaf medical student some time ago suggested that she could become a cardiologist, since that profession has come to prefer visual diagnostics like echocardiography and cardiac catheterization over the stethoscope. Her ambition foretells the time when paralyzed surgeons can carry out operations by blinking their eyes to guide robots to the cutting and sewing. Sixty years ago, when I was a medical student, that would have seemed the stuff of science-fiction. But not today!
...
November 2, 2007
Too Close for Comfort
Brian T. Maurer
I sit by the chair, watching the child lying in the woman’s lap. Draped supine over her mother’s arms with her head thrown back, the little girl and the woman remind me of Michelangelo’s Pietà—the dead Jesus cradled in Mary’s arms.
But this child, as evidenced by her warm skin and twitching limbs, is still among the living. Only these signs and her eyes, rolled back in their sockets, betray her condition.
October 29, 2007
Conference: "The Healing Power of Ancient Literature"
“The Healing Power of Ancient Literature” is the title of a symposium to be held in Reno, Nevada, on June 19 and 20, 2008, under the auspices of The Parker Institute. The symposium’s premise is that literature, especially ancient literature, possesses a profound power to heal our souls, a power that is especially needed today when the rapidity of change and the force of world events combine to make peace of mind an ever more distant and seemingly unreachable goal. Featuring nationally-renowned scholars, the symposium will explore the wisdom literature of Egypt, the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, the poetry of Homer, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes as sources of enlightenment and inspiration. For further information, contact Dr. Lois Parker (loisp@unr.edu; 2878 Barong Court, Reno, NV 89523).
October 29, 2007
Prescribing by Numbers: Drugs and the Definitions of Disease by Jeremy A. Greene
Reviewed by Howard Spiro
During the 60 years that I have been a physician, many symptoms have been turned into diseases, in what philosophers call reification. A good example comes in common “heartburn,” which used to be a badge of conscientiousness, but now has been promoted to GERD or Gastro-Esophageal Reflux Disease. Professional hubris and “big pharma” enthusiasm has turned a minor symptom relieved by a little baking soda into a calamity which demands lifelong vigilance against recurrence. ...
October 24, 2007
Morning Poetry
Brian T. Maurer
Unhurriedly I drove to work, taking the back way over macadam country roads beneath an overcast sky. A continuing medical education cassette tape played in the console, the speaker’s voice droning on about the evaluation of headache in children. I paid little attention and looked out the window instead. ...
September 27, 2007
Metaphor and Meaning:
How Words Work Magic in Our Patients
Ronald Pies, M.D.
I want to suggest in this essay that words work magic. Magic, as tradition tells us, may be for good or ill. As physicians and scientists, of course, we don’t need to assert that magic exists in the way that red blood cells or bacteria exist—and we don’t need to assert anything supernatural about words to say that they can work magic. We just need to realize that words seem to have special and mysterious properties—properties that may heal or harm. ...
September 25, 2007
An Immigrant's Tale
David Ennis, M.D.
First, you have to remember that when I began taking care of Mrs. Garcia there were few Hispanics in the area. I suppose that there were a few living around the textile mills in the northern part of the state. But there were no tiendas nor taquerias, stores which have now become so common a part of the landscape that they are not really noticed. In most parts of the state, it was much as it had been for the past 200 years—you were either black or white. ...
September 11, 2007
The Benevolent Doctor
Rev. John W. Love
I would like to propose to you today the following: doctors are in an almost unique position to mirror God’s goodness and love the world through benevolent helping. Now, just to focus things here, I want to tell you that I am not proposing anything new, especially to a group of Catholic doctors. There is, however, a twist to the concept that I hope will prove interesting and food for further thought. For this, I rely today almost entirely on the insights of one theologian. He is a living German Catholic moral philosopher by the name of Robert Spaemann, and he has written extensively on the subject of benevolence as it relates to our happiness. ...
September 8, 2007
After 28 Years
Brian T. Maurer
Yesterday my wife and I drove to Pennsylvania to meet a friend whom we had not seen in twenty-eight years.
The friend practices medicine in Arizona. He and I graduated from the same institution—I as a physician assistant, he as a physician. I stayed in the northeast; he elected to pursue a family practice residency in the southwest. I suppose that old adage about practicing where you train is true—at least it was for us. ...
September 2, 2007
Patient Understanding
Brian T. Maurer
“I brought my son in yesterday for an earache. The other doctor said he had swimmer’s ear. She gave me some drops to use, but today he says his ear hurts worse.”
I listen to this mother recount her concerns. This is not the first time I have seen her children for minor ailments. I glance at the boy’s medical record, noting that he had been treated for swimmer’s ear last summer as well. ...
July 27, 2007
Physicians and Global Warming
H. Steven Moffic, M.D.
Yale got me started as a community-oriented physician and psychiatrist. How could that not happen, when I was exposed to Fritz Redlich, M.D. as Dean and a rotation at the Community Mental Health Center? Redlich was famous for his treatise on how social class adversely effected mental illness, which was illustrated to me at my community rotation in medical school. ...
July 27, 2007
The Medical Humanities in Nepal
P. Ravi Shankar, M.D.
Nepal does not have a history of education in the medical humanities. The ‘humanities’ (as a course of study) are taught all over the country and there have been many research studies carried out in the humanities. But medicine and the humanities have not been brought together. ...
July 24, 2007
Regarding Writing the Medical Experience
Jeff McCallum
I have, until the moment of this writing, failed to understand the meaning and value of “an open letter.” However, following my second week-long experience at Dr. Davis Watts’ Writing the Medical Experience workshop, I am moved to write, to loudly exclaim both my personal thanks and my wish to urge others to attend this week of magical freedom. ...
July 23, 2007
Spirituality and End-of-Life Care
Howard Spiro
A while back the Hastings Center published a long lament about why changing end-of-life considerations had so bogged down. The collected observations are all wise if not always consistent with views the authors had expressed many years ago, but to change is the stuff of wisdom. ...
July 21, 2007
Remnants of Yale: the Medical School Ligature
William Houghton
The roar of jet engines wipes out all thoughts of my life back in Milwaukee. I land in Hartford, Connecticut, like a blank CD, ready for recording. I always go back for medical school reunions although often I wonder: why? The experience is wrenching in truth--difficult, sweet, and bitter. No one would do it unless there was a nugget inside. In the end, it's usually worth it. This time, I’m back for my 40th! ...
July 8, 2007
A Leg Up
Brian T. Maurer
“It happens whenever he sits still for a short time. He doesn’t complain until he tries to get up. That’s when he cries out in pain. He refuses to stand, and I have to carry him.”
This mother relates how her five-year-old boy began to complain of periodic pain in his knee over the past several days. When I question her further, she reports that he has had no fevers, no sore throat, no other joint pain. He sleeps well at night. No, she didn’t notice any swelling or redness or warmth of the knee joint. I scratch my head, a bit puzzled. ...
June 24, 2007
The Tiger Lady
Laurel Roberts
Just as promised, Hira picks me up Monday morning in a dusty white Jeep. Not the kind that suburban moms drive to ballet lessons, but the real kind – big and boxy, without seatbelts or windows or a muffler, sporting rusty battle wounds left by decades of unpaved roads, rockslides, and monsoons. I climb in the back seat and position myself between a plump nurse in traditional dress and an oversized fishing tackle box crammed with gauze and Tylenol. Hira turns around to give my cheek a good-morning pinch before she begins the obstacle course that will take us from Kathmandu to a secluded countryside Leprosy Clinic. ...
June 21, 2007
The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen.
Reviewed by P. Ravi Shankar, M.D.
Nepal is one of the most remarkable countries on Earth. The country is sandwiched between two Asian giants, China and India. In most dimensions, the country is unremarkable, but in one height there is no parallel. The land rises from the flood plains of the ‘terai’ at around 150 to 200 meters to Mt. Everest at 8848 m, the highest point on Earth. ...
June 14, 2007
Scientific Daydreams
M. R. Namazi, M.D.
When I was a young and curious general practitioner at the age of 28 years old, I developed the hypothesis about the "protective effect of minor thalassemia against cerebrovascular accidents." I had already gathered enough scientific evidence to back up my hypothesis. I felt I should talk with one of my professors, whom I trusted and valued his knowledge, to receive his recommendation of journals which would publish such ideas. ...
June 13, 2007
Medicine and Women's Clothing and Leisure Activities in
Victorian Canada
Eileen O'Connor
North American physicians attained different kinds of authority in the
nineteenth century: a “cultural authority” which implied the power to define
health, illness and healing, and a “social authority”, which led the public to
accept their advice. This article will focus on the development of physicians’
“cultural authority” in the field of women’s fashionable dress and leisure
through their studies and experiments in heat regulation and professional
education and training in Gynaecology.
...
June 8, 2007
Sunday Morning Requiem
Brian T. Maurer
A summer Sunday morning: bright, clear, warm. I’m outside, repairing the lattice-work on my front porch. The excavators destroyed a panel with their backhoe when they dug down deep to replace the sewer drainage pipe. After enduring several frustrating days with four children in the house, I’m thankful that our sewage system works again. ...
June 1, 2007
Introduction: Telling Our Stories
Linda Honan Pellico, Ph.D., APRN
Telling a story, it’s as old as time. Somehow we are carried into another realm that might not been available except with stories. Creating the story carries a parallel richness and can be a source for understanding one’s own as well as another’s experience. Such was the notion behind asking our students to write their stories. ...
May 9, 2007
Passage
Laura Fitzgerald
Two winters ago, you tried to explain nephrology to me over coffees at Starbucks. You co-opted a neighboring table in order to make space for intricate diagrams. I nodded encouragingly, intellectually absent, convinced that I would never wrap my brain around this information. Shamefully aware that I just didn’t care about the particulars of renal function, I worried that perhaps I’d selected the wrong profession. I didn’t want to tell you, an almost-doctor, that none of my nursing coursework was sticking. “Bulimic learning”, an insensitive yet apt term for the frantic cerebral stuffing of copious medical tidbits followed by repeated exam-time purging, was proving completely ineffective. ...
May 9, 2007
You Come From a Long Line of Healers
Sylvia Parker
You come from a long line of healers, my aunt said to me the summer before this— before Yale and med-surg, before cadavers and NCLEX questions. I had to remind myself of this many times throughout the semester. I would remind myself of my uncle and great-grandmother, the ways in which they healed and the people they touched. Maybe I should have been a medicine woman, but you have to be chosen and nobody chose me so here I am at Yale, a wannabe nurse, a wannabe nurse practitioner. I am supposedly someone who is learning to heal. ...
May 9, 2007
The Return of the I-Man
Robert S. Rosson, M.D.
It has been rumored that CBS and MSNBC are preparing to
reinstate the morning simulcast of the Don Imus
show. This reporter has obtained a copy of a taped segment for
review by the networks before allowing live broadcasts to air. Here is the
script: ...
May 7, 2007
Teacher and Student
Brian T. Maurer
The new student is here, and I’m in a panic.
It’s been a while since I’ve precepted a student-in-training. Already it’s apparent that I, as teacher, have neglected to do my homework.
I haven’t taken the time to memorize a few irrelevant esoteric facts that I can drop casually in conversation with the student to impress her with my superior medical knowledge. It’s been a long time since I’ve looked at lists of differential diagnoses for the common cold and acute diarrhea. I wonder how well I’ll perform in teaching someone recently schooled in the most up-to-date medical syndromes and latest procedures. ...
May 7, 2007
Cardiology on Call
Stefanie Y. Lee
66 y.o. man with atrial fibrillation in room B13. Night has fallen over the city, but the hospital’s emergency department retains the intensity of its fluorescent ambience. Glancing at the note in my hand again, I round a corner and weave my way among the supply carts and wheelchairs, looking for the patient I have been asked to see. ...
April 25, 2007
Poetry
Figure and Form
Nick Ripatrazone
I never comprehended my arm
until I sat in that emergency room,
my right shoulder lifted in a perpetual shrug,
humerus dislocated from scapula,
and waited for the specialist from Harrisburg. ...
April 15, 2008
Asymmetry
Nick Ripatrazone
during our first anatomy class
the professor folded paper down the center
forming equal halves, pressed
the crease with his thumb and instructed
that we do the same: teaching,
like medicine, requires that palpable interaction. ...
April 15, 2008
Four by Four
Jeff McCallum
The hospice nurses came two by two
or rather
one after the other ...
April 15, 2008
System Failure
Manna Valiathan, M.D.
A computer crashes,
They never know why.
Hardware, software,
Viruses, nothing to go by.
Theories and suppositions,
No real explanations.
Its crashed.
A simple fact.
A crash,
That's all. ...
March 26, 2008
Blessings
Jeff McCallum
There are perhaps
too many miracles
They have become footnotes
passing unnoticed through our days ...
March 16, 2008
The Frito-Lay® Triolet
James S. Wilk, M.D.
Nothing beats a bag of Fritos®,
the doctor was ashamed to say.
Except for salsa and Tostitos®,
nothing beats a bag of Fritos®.
Don't forget the chips and Cheetos® --
he eats a bag of those each day.
Nothing beats a bag of Fritos®,
the doctor was ashamed to say.
March 16, 2008
Obstetrical Obstruction
James S. Wilk, M.D.
The female pelvic outlet
is like Procrustes' bed
except it don't keep all of us
from growin' too big a head.
March 16, 2008
The Buffalo Fence
Nick Ripatrazone
Laotians mixed dung with beetlenut
to salve a burned hand or infected foot
but such treatment was no longer necessary ...
March 3, 2008
The Malignancies of Medicine ...
Utkarsh Acharya
Burdened with “blocks” and boards;
Examination upon arduous examination,
Test upon test;
We rise before the suns and set long after the moons;
We tirelessly and trepidatiously trouble our cerebral convolutions
With details of corticospinal tracts and café au lait spots and Cushing’s syndromes;
We intellectually desecrate the sanctity of a human corpse; ...
February 11, 2008
The Visit
Brian T. Maurer
Retired, he sits, reclining in his chair,
A glass of water posted by his side;
His eyes take on a look of furrowed care;
They drift, and shift, then open rather wide:
The sudden sound of footsteps on the stoop
Portends the coming visit of a friend—
February 11, 2008
Around the Pool in the Jaundiced Light of Morning
Laurie Rosenblatt, M.D.
Boys’ bodies recline on plastic chairs in variant
pietàs. Night remains beneath
beardless chins, in the folds of arms. Tom lies
unconscious, a slender ankle crossed over the other,
a line of charcoal tracing his shadowed groin. ...
January 14, 2008
Amateur Night at Caesar’s
Laurie Rosenblatt, M.D.
Drag queens take the mic in turn
flickering shocked brows as they lip synch
teetering on two- inch heels.
Tom marks time until lynx-eyed
Bobbi Bradley strides the stage—
six foot two, fabgams sheathed
in black net, he wears a red sequined teddy
like original skin. ...
January 14, 2008
Each Partial Sum in a Limit is Finite
Laurie Rosenblatt, M.D.
The murmur of oxygen flows
through a nasal canula to disrupt the hushed
negative pressure of Isolation.
The body barely tents the sheet
while lines penetrate veins
so stripped of fat they lie beneath
the skin like drinking straws. ...
January 14, 2008
Lipodystrophy, My Darling
Laurie Rosenblatt, M.D.
Using a disposable razor to keep warts
from spreading to clear parts of his face, Tom sees
the mirror catch the palm’s blades unsheathed
in sun, the convex scar replacing part
of his right breast, his heron-thin legs, and a belly
that overhangs his button-fly boxer’s band. ...
January 14, 2008
Rationals and Irrationals Make Up the Real
Laurie Rosenblatt, M.D.
Tom lies on the couch considering his indoor
geography. Thin rivers of oxygen in plastic
tubes traverse the floor. The metallic whisper
of the stair chair is not like wind in poolside
palms. A chill scissors through his chest. ...
January 14, 2008
In the Hospital
Sarah White
Fearful and mute in the hospital din,
a newcomer hears:
Tell us your pain score. Point
to one of our men-
in-the-moon. ...
January 14, 2008
Professional Kindness
Jeff McCallum
It seems so rare
when competence and kindness cross
here
in America
in our own neighborhood
on our own street corners
Deeds of loving kindness
that do not pass across borders of country or state
but of the heart
the soul
the fabric that makes us
each to the other
human ...
December 19, 2007
The Weight on the Doctor's Wife
Jeff McCallum
I
first person
singular
am one of the dying her husband
or someone almost exactly like him
carries on his back ...
November 25, 2007
Passage
James S. Wilk, M.D.
Birthing turns a woman into a train. Breath
hisses through her teeth like a locomotive
churning steam. Arms struggle like mighty pistons
pushing the bed rails. ...
November 2, 2007
Hands at Forty
James S. Wilk, M.D.
Men often rediscover at forty,
deep in mirrors while shaving,
their fathers’ faces.
But I see in the warm amnion
of sinks, soap and running water
my father’s hands. ...
November 2, 2007
For Rachel, 1982 - 2007
James S. Wilk, M.D.
I wasn't there to witness your death --
but I dropped my stethoscope when I heard --
but only the aftermath: your delicate, naked
frame hospital-gowned in blue, the plastic
breathing tube taped to your ashen lips, ...
November 2, 2007
My cadaver's uterus
James S. Wilk, M.D.
Surely Eve's womb was larger
than this flattened pink plum.
November 2, 2007
Daydreams and Nightmares
Jeff McCallum
When I dream of a home,
it is a house I see,
not a land.
I make assumptions:
there will be no bombs falling in the neighbourhood,
there will be a neighbourhood.
I will be allowed its quiet enjoyment.
I assume it will not be
a cardboard box and yesterday’s newspapers,
or have tin walls savaged from somewhere
and bars on the windows in place of glass.
It will have a bathroom,
more than one.
I do not have this dream because I am living
in a camp for displaced persons
or a FEMA trailer. ...
October 24, 2007
To Whom It May Concern
Tim Connelly
He tried his best
and never refused to work
or function
at what he was capable
of doing, but he simply
was not cut to be a medic. ...
September 25, 2007
One Year Later. Doctor's Note
Tim Connelly
He had returned to the clinic again
with his vague complaints.
The event this time
involved a change in management at his job.
The boss was an “idiot” according to him. ...
September 25, 2007
The Phone Rings
Tim Connelly
The phone rings.
It’s Earl.
Frank Johnson is dead.
He shot himself in the head.
I never thought Frank would kill himself.
Every time Earl calls
it’s bad news about another dead vet. ...
September 25, 2007
The Dosimetrist and Me
Jeff McCallum
Solid water
not ice
but a kind of polymer
shape and density
about like the body part they are preparing
to irradiate ...
July 27, 2007
Sevenling (He Is Doctor)
James S. Wilk, M.D.
He is doctor to a thousand
girls, husband to a woman
and father to a boy. ...
July 20, 2007
Hyperemesis Gravidarum
James S. Wilk, M.D.
Her jeans no longer hugged her bony frame;
emaciated, sunken cheeks and eyes
betrayed a face once worthy of her name--
Venus--a goddess starved and undersize. ...
July 20, 2007
Her Eyes Filled, Thus the Poem Spoke
Mary Kennan Herbert
Man, are you telling me all those nights I spent crying into my pillow
I had nuclei, drawings and equations ready to hatch?
Sob! Here are great ideas to provide therapy and tranquility to those
waiting in the wings or waiting for wings or a pat on the shoulder. ...
July 17, 2007
The Best I Could Do
Mary Kennan Herbert
A superficial gesture, I know.
I wrote a poem as a tribute to my mother,
for her memorial service. Meanwhile,
back in the hospital basement, interns
cut and diced, ...
July 8, 2007
Transgender
Paul Rousseau, M.D.
The encounter a blend of
Eroticism and fragrant sexuality:
A red dress, blowing in
The wind of a brief rainfall,
Hair pasted to a rouged face,
Femininity rising from the
Depths of black high heels.
June 22, 2007
The Healing
Jeff McCallum
How hard we all worked at the reconciliation
of time and desire
watching time erode desire
until the last wall crumbled
and he asked to die
expressing his desire for no more time
no more pain
just
the final reconciliation
His desire for nothing
but peace ...
June 21, 2007
Tick Tock
Jeff McCallum
I have to wonder when the clock begins to run down
Sure we’re all outward bound
but in the beginning was forever
though
sooner than later ever came
the clock begins tock tick tick tock
tick tick ticking
somehow counting backward from some not quite
unremembered yesterday I fail to put my finger on ...
June 20, 2007
the call night
Sachin D. Shah
once upon a midnight dreary,
while i pondered, weak and weary,
stomach empty, eyes quite bleary,
which tone to set my pager beep;
i tried to read, though on call,
gazing mostly at the wall
and felt myself start to fall,
fall into a fitful sleep.
drink a cup of coffee, thought i,
for i mustn't fall asleep;
my vigilance, i must keep. ...
June 7, 2007
A Shrieking Child
Jeff McCallum
It's honest
the shrieks and howls of the infant
in the overflowing clinic waiting room
crowded
like a Denver Airport terminal after a blizzard ...
June 5, 2007
Al
Kathleen Grieger
I was told I didn't need to speak
He could not answer me
he would no longer understand
I read to him. Magazines,
news clips, humor
He had always made me laugh
No movement, eyes closed
No reaction. I continued to read
hoping he would hear me ...
June 4, 2007
Your Cancer's Spread
Jeff McCallum
The data knifes quickly through the fog
a tiger springing from jungle camouflage
all other sound ceases
only a staccato synoptically fireworks
terminating in
no pain please
June 4, 2007
Before the Knife
Jeff McCallum
The biggest question
let’s say
my slip showing
the $64,000 question
is why did I delay the surgery a week
Work
or that other series of obligations
one believes one plays
so vital a role in ...
June 4, 2007
The Right to Cry
Jeff McCallum
Is
infected by a stranger
because of a one night stand
more worthy
enabling
enlightening
tragic
than stricken by
stuck by
attacked by ...
June 4, 2007
It Is Enough
Jeff McCallum
I sit silent
brooding
lost somewhere in the syntax
of stage four metastasized
solitaire fills the screen
solitary fills the picture
lost an apt description ...
May 31, 2007
Two for One
Jeff McCallum
We’re all going on the same journey
some of us just get a chance to pack first
or is it unpack?
We don’t realize at the beginning
we’re working our way toward the finish light
or is it line?
It’s something that happens along the way
sometimes
sometimes it never occurs to us
even and unless someone leaves
to begin his journey
leaving us somewhere on the path ...
May 31, 2007
Like Lovers
Anna-Leila Williams
I wash myself
But the smell of you
Lingers.
Like lovers
My sweat
And your sweat
Feeding one pool.
Damn you, don’t die! ...
May 9, 2007
My First Patient
Clifford C. Wilson
You called it Walton's Mountain
Your doctors called it Waldenstrom's macroglobulinemia
You said they would keep giving you blood,
you didn't know what was happening to it
you didn't know where the blood was going.
You told me your doctor gave up on you
you said he threw his arms up ...
May 9, 2007
Catechism
Sara Baker
I don’t remember them taking you away,
but I remember your absence.
as when a stone is lifted off a toe, or a tooth falls
out and you tongue the bloody
hole, curious that you never noticed how
salty and tender that particular
geography could be. ...
April 19, 2007
As Time Passes
Jeff McCallum
I hope you believed me when I said
Life is more intrusive
causes far more strife then the illness
Illness is an event
like the sunrise
or to the more macabre
or fatalistic
the glass half empty guys
a sunset ...
March 17, 2007
Thanks to All
Jeff McCallum
Thinking of writing what I was thinking of writing,
compiling the notes,
painting the picture,
I found I was fighting,
in a struggle to release the demons,
and triumphant,
gallop homeward with the prize.
Attempting to confront the truth,
to sketch each hill and berm
imagine the surprise
of finding canvas burned
and note pad water soaked.
My steed had balked,
deciding to stay home. ...
March 17, 2007
The Trip of His Life and Death
Tim Connelly
Bob’s heart bypass surgery
had given him
a second chance
at life.
He rode his bicycle
for almost 20 years
of good health.
After his surgery,
he learned
to eat right
and take care
of himself.
Bob, however, died
of a heart attack
after he finished
a cross-country trip
on his bike. ...
March 11, 2007
If You Have an Operation ... It's the One to Get
Tim Connelly
I smoked cigars.
I ate red meat.
I drank lots of beer.
I was elgible.
Coronary bypass
shouldn’t be seen
as anything other
than major surgery.
My arteries were clogged
with yellow fat.
I faced
the operation
with fear. ...
March 11, 2007