There is some e mail that I don’t get to open right away. Offers to redeem my Marriott Rewards points at exotic new resorts, to lower the rate on my mortgage…the ones about cheap Viagra from Canada I don’t open at all. Regrettably, if things get really busy, as they were on Friday, I don’t even get to read e mail that I want to open. Like my poetry email, for example. At least two of the major publishing houses, and many of the internet resources for poets published frequent, if not daily newsletters and/or started sending daily “Poem a Day” e mails in celebration of the 10th Annual National Poetry Month this April. I’ve been getting so much poetry e mail, I set up a separate screen name on AOL just to accommodate it all. And, with April, which was busy enough, coming to an end, I was keeping pretty up to date with it…even uploading some of the Podcasts to my daughter’s iPod for later reference and entertainment.
Until Friday. After two relatively straightforward anorectal cases, my boss and I hunkered down for a long, difficult case. A young (51 year old) man with a very low rectal cancer, now six weeks following preoperative chemo/radiation therapy needed surgical resection. The operation involved removing over a foot of his colon and rectum, mobilizing (freeing up) his splenic flexure, connecting (anastomosing) his colon to his anus, and forming a temporary ileostomy. Seven hours and a couple of pee-breaks later, the tour de force was complete. My back was killing me, my associate’s hand was cramping, and the fifth anesthesiologist of the case was asking us whether we prefer our massages before or after a huge case like this. We both just looked at him. I saw this patient today on rounds, he looks great, just extubated early this morning, all the puffiness from the massive fluids used during the surgery to keep him hydrated starting to resolve. I told him, “Don’t worry, I got the number of the truck that hit you.” He grabbed his sides as he started to laugh, ouch.
Only last night I opened an e mail from the Knopf Poetry Center, dated 4/28/06. It was part of their “Poem A Day,” program and it contained this poem, by June Jordan:
FIRST POEM AFTER SERIOUS SURGERY
The breath continues but the breathing
hurts
Is this the way death wins its way
against all longing
and redemptive thrust from grief?
Head falls
Hands crawl
and pain becomes the only keeper
of my time
I am not held
I do not hold
And touch degenerates into new
agony
I feel
the healing of cut muscle/
broken nerves
as I return to hot and cold
sensations
of a body tortured by the flight
of feeling/normal
registrations of repulsion
or delight
On this meridian of failure or recovery
I move
or stop respectful
of each day
but silent now
and slow
My question is, after serious surgery is this how the patient feels, or the surgeon?
For a download of this poem, and a Podcast of Toni Morrison reading it, click here.
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IV
The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.
Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam's curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.
The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.
The chill ascends from feet to knees,
The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed, then I must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.
The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.
TS Eliot, from Four Quartets, East Coker, Part IV
laureen--
This is the poem from which I took the title for my blog. Thank you for your interesting response, which, in a very intense way describes the depths of need in every surgeon-patient relationship.
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