Oh my, well.
Whenever I read these next poems,
it seems folks will come up after the reading
and say to me, all those poems you read towards the end,
they really reminded me of that television show "ER."
And then the next question, of course,
is, so do you still watch "ER?"
And I have to kind of sheepishly admit
that I do sometimes still watch that show, which
is all the more pathetic since I spent
so much of my life dealing with situations like those depicted
on the show.
But I want to say for the record, as I always do,
that these poems were written and conceived well
before "ER" was ever aired.
And they were actually really an effort,
I think, to a very different kind of effort or impulse
from what I think "ER" depicts of medicine.
And I was really trying to think about the narratives
of my patients and how to make those narratives sort of center
stage and really honor their dignity.
And I think so much of what we see on "ER"
is actually a kind of a glorification
of the physicians.
And they are working out all their neuroses on the patients,
and the patients are sort of this side issue.
But these poems really were meant to,
again, bring the patients narrative, which
I think is so often silenced by medicine
into a kind of prominent place in the story.
So I'll read just a few of these.
There are a sequence called "Ten Patients, and Another."
And I'll just read probably five or six of them.
"Ten Patients, and Another"
Mrs. G, the patient is a 60-odd-year-old white female
who presents with fever, cough, and shaking chills.
No further history could be elicited.
She doesn't speak.
The patient social history was non-contributory.
Someone left her here.
The intern on the case heard crackles in both lungs.
And EKG was done, which showed the heart was beating
in the normal sinus rhythm, except for an occasional
dropped beat.
An intravenous line was placed.
The intern found a bruise behind her ear.
She then became quite agitated and began
to sob without producing tears.
We think she's dry.
She's resting quietly on Haldol, waiting for her bed upstairs.
Jamal, the patient is a three-year-old Black male.
The full-term product of a pregnancy
that was according to his grandmother
unplanned and may be complicated by prenatal alcohol exposure.
Did OK.
Developmentally delayed, but normal weights and heights
until last week when he ingested what's
turned out to be cocaine, according to the lab results.
His grandmother had said she'd seen him
with some baby powder on his face and hands
before he started seizing and they brought him in.
The vital signs have stabilized.
The nurse is getting DSS involved.
The mom, she left it on the kitchen table.
That's her, the one who sings to him all night.