The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine

Three Poems

Remembering the Old School
Mid-Hospital Night's Dream
Physicians Assistant

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Remembering the Old School

Like all else
consensus and technocracy had medicine change its stance
from learned leisurely and cognitive pursuance
to a frantic dance in hot pursuit of every nuance of technology

While clinicians steering luminescent fingers
serve the science well
one worthy question lingers
when machines supplant your sense of hearing touch or smell
who serves as diagnostician endocrinologically

With patients still reporting nausea or headache as most common gripe
add listening
to review of MRI or PET scans to reveal the phenotype
The ordered tests are done today
interpreted tomorrow
find the site of pain but not the place of sorrow
Miracle machines that paint the picture over well
they sum the gross effect
exclude the spiritual

And for the actuaries
one statistic truthful and compelling
anxiety prompts patients through the doors
not fever or some swelling

Doctors
please curtail your haste for certainty of diagnosis
remember
offer yet the comfort of Aesculapuis

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***

Mid-Hospital Night’s Dream
For Dr. D. Watts, patient

My dear Florence
or is it Ms. Nightingale
which seems so much more apropos
gets to the point so much more succinctly

Night

a time for romance
reading
watching the late show with popcorn
and yes
a time for sleeping

Why
dearest Florence
or gentle Jack
as the case may be
do you insist on waking me

Once I watched the second hand on the wall clock
jerk forward and back
every second of each minute
of every hour
no tick tock
just the jerk jerk jerking of time inching toward dawn
while I was dreaming of sleep
morphine and sleep
perchance to sleep
only to sleep
It was almost pleasant to hear you rustling into the room
raise and add the elixir to my drip every
interminably long four hours
moving me almost and ever closer
to the pool
the warm wave less pool
of sleep
What you were doing the other three or four times an hour
remains beyond me
but then
then
you were an angel

Unable to enter the pool unaided
I requested a sleeping aid
knock out drops if possible
a Mickey Finn as it were
to enable a cannon balling deep
into that wonderful world
that lost Atlantis
of sleep

After consulting the attending
you
my sweet Nightingale
brought the pills
the water
the cheerful well of sleep
directly to my lips

I
slept

I know I was happy
in heaven for all
of four or five
minutes
until you
dear Florence
the very messenger of rest
awakened me
draining the pool
for a survey on pneumonia vaccinations
for people twenty years my senior

Which moves me ask
Who won the pool that night
the one to which the nurses each kick in a buck or two
crowning as winner
the one with the best unreason
for waking me up

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***

Physicians Assistant

They weren’t hard words really
nothing too complex
just
a lot of them
I thought
as I concentrated on not interrupting
not hurrying him along
A careful person doing a difficult job
thoughtfully
thoroughly
carefully
as matter of fact as my insurance agent
Not exactly memorized
like the data relay from the form takers for the research studies
not quite rote
every case a little different
Improvisation on a theme
a dark
terrible tale
made no easier in the telling and retelling
would be closer to the truth
He no doubt assumed I would be stunned
shocked
that if I had not come in with the mind of an eighth grader
I would certainly be headed there fast

He may have been correct
I remember a hundred unspoken questions
a jumble of words and thoughts
Having had cancer once
twice
now again
and apparently
forever
I don’t think shock entered the picture
there just wasn’t one
a picture I mean

It was Mr.
Hollander
I remembered
not Doctor
Sensible
I thought
as I waited for him to return with the physician

Sensible not to take almost an hour of a specialist’s time
for a lesson in biology or anatomy 101
or the tears
grief
or anger that may erupt
interrupting
this real life lesson
in real time
about the facts of life as it was
or had come to be
and where one could go from here

Time to leave home now child
off to college or booted into the work world at seventeen
certain realities are
or will come upon you
here are your choices

God bless Mr.
Hollander
He was thorough
careful and caring
allowing the Doctor the gift of time
Time he could spend with me perhaps
or someone less fortunate
when the time came
for the knife

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Published: February 25, 2007