Home
/
doctor poems
/
Page 4

Tag: doctor poems

Heightened Awareness

Carl V. Tyler May 24, 2019 9 Comments

No power-down switch to arrest
That incessant activity of the mind and senses
Not even for our wedding anniversary
Getaway.

At the airport my eyes reflexively dart
From the cashier’s cheery smile to fix on her arm
Laid bare by her Dunkin’ Donuts uniform
And the glaring track-mark trail
As she carefully hands me my scalding hot coffee.

On board American Airlines my ears instinctively pinpoint
That paroxysmal brassy cough of the man in seat 20C
Debating whether it could be pertussis.

The Best Storyteller Award

Daniel Becker December 28, 2018 6 Comments

Daniel Becker ~

At the clinic retreat everyone gets a prize,
and the Best Storyteller reminds us of those times
a man goes on a journey. Not just any man: Dr. William Osler,

the doctors’ doctor, the professors’ professor, the textbook author,
and this Canadian in Philadelphia crosses the Delaware to Camden
where Walt Whitman, the great American poet, the poet’s poet,

endures fame and poor health.
Every case is supposed to be interesting, but Whitman,
according to Osler, suffered only from what his age could explain

plus or minus the usual slings and arrows,
the wear and tear of gravity,
the side effects and worries,

Riven

Martha Carlough March 9, 2018 5 Comments

Martha Carlough ~

In medical school
I learned the particular sensitivity
of the breastbone

The rub of a knuckle
awakens even one deeply asleep
beckoning back to the present moment

Grief has the potential
to show us how cramped–
even deadened–we’ve become

Chest riven with pain
my fingers are now free
to explore the stories

Walking Each Other Home

Allie Gips January 5, 2018 7 Comments

Allie Gips ~

Winter in New England and
night replaces afternoon, darkness wraps the streets while we are all still inside.
There are no windows in the Emergency Department anyway
except of course the window into this city–the stream of women with bruised arms
and orbits that they will not explain, the revolving door of opiate addicts
nodding off, crying out, praying for forgiveness, the chronic-pain patients who rip
apart all of your idealism and ambition, trade it in for a one-time hit of oxy.

This Is Not a Drill

Daniel Becker November 3, 2017 6 Comments

Daniel Becker ~

At work there are three kinds of drills: fire, earthquake, shooter.
During a fire drill the building empties into the parking lot
where crowds kill time and blame the fire marshal.

The smokers want to smoke but don’t.
A doctor talks to the 2:40 patient and tries to stay on schedule.
If communication is the heart of medicine,

diligence is its best habit. Then he looks for the 3:00 patient.
In a 5th floor office the photograph of a storm-tossed schooner
is 10 degrees off plumb because that wasn’t a drill.

Retrospective

Jack Coulehan July 12, 2013 No Comments

Jack Coulehan

Forty years passed. His body replaced
its cells, with the exception of his heart’s
persistent pump and the mushroom-like paste
of his brain. Only scattered synaptic charts
of his internship remain, etched in myelin,
a few of them deeply. Nonetheless, a dried
umbilical cord connects that powerful womb
to the aging man, across a gulf as wide
as imagination. He doubts there’s a thread
to follow, a blockaded door to open,
or a fusty corridor down which to tread
to a solution: those he hurt, the woman
he killed with morphine, more than a few
he saved. His ally, hope, will have to do.

About the poet:

Jack Coulehan is a poet, physician and medical educator whose work appears frequently in medical journals

During Lunch at Medical Center Hour Today

Daniel Becker May 10, 2013 No Comments

a developmental biologist shows us a video of a fertilized egg
dividing into two then four then eight cells–
a day’s worth of differentiation in a minute–
followed by a slide of a week old blastocycst drawn in cross section
with an outer cell mass or future placenta and an inner cell mass
that’s either someone already or destined to be someone
with the same constitutional rights as any non-incarcerated citizen,
and while on the subject of genes as destiny the next clip
shows an unfertilized stem cell donated by a monkey at a lab
where the genetic basis of alcoholism is put to the test:
the stem cell donor sits in the corner of a cage, big smile on her face
since she was

My Friend the Scholar Comes at Last to Attend His Father

Norbert Hirschhorn March 29, 2013 1 Comment

Norbert Hirschhorn

He considered the wasted moult of a once
large, ferocious creature: mouth agape,
muscles twitching with every rattled breath.

Agapé–my friend the scholar marveled
at the homograph, and the thing that feasted
on his father. He laid a futon at the foot

of the high white bed, some books, a laptop,
a thermos. Nearby, an emesis basin,
dentures, bedpan, glass half-full of beaded water.

Third Party

Mary E. Moore July 16, 2010 No Comments

Mary E. Moore

Tipping forward to escape
the wheelchair’s confines, the ancient one
pleads with her feet, “Go home.”

It’s her companion who volunteers
the Chief Complaint: “Ever since her stroke,
Mother’s back seems to hurt.

Her doctors say there’s nothing can be done,
but I thought that perhaps a specialist ….”
She strokes the old woman’s shoulders.

“Does it hurt here, or there, or if I touch this?”
My fingers probe among birdish bones.
Ignoring me, the patient whimpers, “Home.”

When the daughter’s eyes register pain, I say,
“I’ll inject this spot near her sacroiliac joint.
It may provide relief, in any case do no harm.”

I fill in the charge sheet attached to the chart.
Low back pain. Trigger point injection.
Return PRN. But how should

Sleep Hygiene

Daniel Becker June 25, 2010 No Comments

Daniel Becker

Outline the night and all its objects
in black magic marker.

The world through closed eyes
needs texture
the way tires need tread,
brains need wrinkles, and hypnosis
needs the power of suggestion–
traction, surface area, and control
might also apply to a cat
buried alive underneath the sheets;
if so, don’t forget the one on top.

Stay up for several nights before
the night you plan to sleep.

Oil the ceiling fan.

True or false: the bladder
is on a separate circuit?

Don’t eat in bed, especially chips.

Snoring + sleep apnea + restless legs
+ hemorrhoids + lumbago =

the human condition. The winter itch
as well would be unfair.

Use pillows to solve or suppress all of the above,
a

Depression Session

Abby Caplin April 2, 2010 No Comments

Abby Caplin

The chopped apple of her father’s eye,
She tastes the grapes of her mother’s drunken wrath
The barely visible slivers of silver-tongued almond
Needle her intestines as she savors
The seedless watermelon of fruitless friendships,
And endures the hard rind
Of a body gone awry,
To be chewed and chewed until swallowed or
Spat out. A salad of sorts
Surrounded by lemons
Home-grown, organic, bitter
And full of juice. She brings me a tough
Clear plastic bag filled with them
To our session.
“They’re the last of the season,” she tells me.
I pray this is true,
While at home, I pore through cookbooks,
Searching for yet another recipe.

About the poet:

Abby Caplin MD MA practices mind-body medicine and counseling

Death at a Distance

Edwin Gardiner February 19, 2010 No Comments

Your message hung on the phone line

like his striped shirt blowing
in the last wind of his life:
softly and with dignity.
His facial bones,
and body contours
he allowed to be chiseled
to an insubstantial sharpness
by the flow of chemicals and
the relentless labor of his disease:
both polished his body to dust.
Your life that has breathed that dust
for years will, someday,
carry it to the stars,
where it belongs.

About the poet:

Edwin Gardiner, a urologist, was in private practice for thirty years in San Diego; he did his surgical training at UCSF and NYU-Bellevue Medical Center. “I’ve written since my undergraduate days at

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Tag: doctor poems

Heightened Awareness

The Best Storyteller Award

Riven

Walking Each Other Home

This Is Not a Drill

Retrospective

During Lunch at Medical Center Hour Today

My Friend the Scholar Comes at Last to Attend His Father

Third Party

Sleep Hygiene

Depression Session

Death at a Distance

Subscribe to Pulse.

It's free.

Tag: doctor poems

Start typing and press enter to search

Subscribe to Pulse.

It's free.