The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine
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From a Woman's Point of View
Clarissa Jakobsons
clarissalj@alltel.net
We shake firm hands over the single mattress in Room Three. Your Harvard smile eager as a groom on his wedded night. Yes, you were gentle, as promised, but I wonder if Midazolam and Meperidine were effective. Should I feel tipsy during our encounter? I spilled forth my first-born’s accomplishments during our first brief encounter-fifteen minutes. Second daughter respectfully requests equal time, may we reschedule?
Six tablespoons of Ginger-Lemon phospho soda did not deliver advertised results. And I gulped my last liter of ginger ale yesterday. Lemon-lime jello, never more! This liquid diet hammers nails into my cranial temples.
Hillcrest Hospital records state yours truly an unemployed homemaker. I beg to differ being a living poet and ex-art teacher, enclosed please find my resume and card. Our family album thanks your discreet photos of my cantankerous cecum, ileum, and ascending colon. A humble artistic suggestion: to obtain brighter whites and darker darks, experiment with internal zooms of hemorrhoids attached to the irritable bowel.
Procedure: Periscope enters A, turns right, delivers pain that transverses left and ascends the Cecum, or the end.
Findings: Colonic stool in entire colon. My humble suggestion: Suction! Vacuum the colon prior to procedure, which eliminates need to ingest Fleet & ginger ale the previous day. Patients will reciprocate your smile.
Your Recommendation: Original Metamucil, 1 teaspoon, by mouth indefinitely. Dr’s preference for papier de toilette?
Instructions following Colonoscopy:
1. Do not eat or drink until air placed in colon is expelled.Personal suggestion for future colonoscopy patients: invest in a bidet and use Metamucil regularly. Thank you, Dr. Yong. Your spousal tip, “Do not make wife nervous,” saved a marriage.
I blew that one, Dr. Yang, with an egg-beater eggs, blue-berried pancakes, stripped bacon and coffee in Hillcrest’s two star cafeteria.
Recommendation: Hillcrest hire a Cordon Bleu chef.
2. Do NOT make critical decisions for 24 hours.
Hmn: Cancel my divorce lawyer’s four o’clock appointment?
3. Expelling large amounts of air is normal.
Finally science defines normalcy!
4. No BM’s for 1-3 days is normal.
Thanks for verification that I am normal.
5. IV tenderness at site.
Bruised I am, but the seven a.m. nurses, a cordial delight.
6. Questions?
Call my gentle gastroenterologist, Dr. Peter Yang, he’s in the book.
About the author:
A former art professor remarked that Clarissa Jakobsons' sketchbooks looked more like poetry than paintings. Who would have guessed this observation accurately predicted her current life direction? She is associate editor of the Arsenic Lobster magazine and first place winner of the Akron Art Museum 2005 New Words Competition. Her poems have appeared in many publications including Wicked Alice, The Cleveland Anthology of Poets, Deep Cleveland Press, 2005; DreamSeeker Magazine, Literary Mama, WAH, Twin Crane Press, The Homeless Grapevine, Epitome Magazine, etc. "A Poet Traveling Incognito" is her first 120-page book published by New Kiev Publications, in March 2006 and is available at City Lights, San Francisco; Black Oak Books, Oakland; and Loganberry Books, Cleveland. Don’t be surprised if you see Clarissa kicking sandcastles and painting Provincetown dunes, climbing the majestic Berkeley cliffs, or reading at Shakespeare and Company in Paris, France.
Published: October 24, 2006