After a Chicago Hospital Night Shift
Scott McKee
Graduate College
Doctor
John Weber
College of Medicine '87
Committing Emotional Suicide
Why
must I
bleed
in small deep places
dagger thrusts
slowly.
Isn't there some
humanitarian way
(figuratively at least)
to cut the jugular vein of feeling
and let it all
drain out
once and forever,
instead of healing
wounding
healing
wounding.
What size knife
do I use
and what name
carve upon it?
Jacqueline Jones
Occupational Therapy
No Yanks
I had a patient
No — he had a doctor.
I knew his syndrome,
He knew nothing
of limitations.
He had a lesion
A knot of poison and pain
A contemptuous little brat inside of him
Laughing at an old soldier's stupid courage.
For a second, his grin faltered,
It returned, no longer absurd.
Its reasons made my gut unravel.
My mind became incontinent,
It was only seconds away now.
I was going to have a patient.
Leo Weinstein
College of Medicine '87
Honorable Mention
It's Just a Job
A visitor asked me how I "could work with those children", during the
course of my position as director of Occupational Therapy at the
Children's Division of a state mental hospital.
They come to us
their wings torn and tattered
by the gales of life —
Our butterfly children of neglect.
They learned so early
that
indifference —
not hate —
is the opposite of love.
They've taken the beatings
grateful
for even the attention of punishment
received —
at least it showed
that some one felt —
something —
enough to hurt them.
What can we give them?
Caring,
knowing that at least one
loves enough
to hold the frightened, flailing hands.
until the struggles cease,
to wipe the tears,
to listen —
most of all, to listen,
not just to words spoken
as they aim their words
like arrows
or thrown stones
to wound and cripple.
but to wordless agony,
acting out life's brutal story.
They lash out
terror struck
when there are no boundaries
in a limitless world
pitilessly ignoring childish needs.
So, we try to build a cushioned box
to help, not cage our butterflies.
At least a box has comfort
in four walls —
something you can touch
and know if s there.
One day,
when they have learned to fly again,
they'll be set free
timid, but stronger
to withstand the gales of life.
Jacqueline Jones
Occupational Therapy
Third Place Prize Winner
Such Sights ...
If only going to the hospital were not, usually, so unexpected. After all, medical people are trained to hospitals. They are given defenses, we are told, they have a distancing,
a necessary objectivity, an ability to keep working without damage to their own well
being. For the rest of us hospitalization usually occurs suddenly, without warning; even
when expected it cannot be prepared for. I have always resolved, after each experience
of a hospital, to be ready for the next. But time passes, resolve fades with memory, and
suddenly I am there again, in a hospital, unable to defend myself from such sights, or
worse, as I never forget. And so, although I am by no means old, I am frightened by such
sights, and I am afraid of death.
If only death was not so arbitrary. The thought is worn, I know, but it is no less unsettling
for that, and what is banal is often true. So many things go wrong with the human body.
Not that what can go wrong, will go wrong, but rather that the human body is effectively
an infinity of processes in which an infinity of things can go wrong ... I remember one of
the several men with whom I shared a ward in a VA hospital once. He always kept his
robe buttoned to the top, and I learned why one morning when I wandered by a room
with open door in which he was surrounded by doctors examining his naked body
covered with glossy crimson blotches. He caught my eyes. He told me later, embarrassedly, that the doctors said it might have something to do with his digestive system
being out of sync, "or something like that," But they did not know for certain and they did
not know what to do. He explained this shyly, as if apologizing for an impolite bodily
function over which he had not exercised civilized control.
Death is easy too .... When I was an undergraduate, a professor of French fell with a
heart attack while waiting for the elevator. While he died, a crowd of professors and
students gathered around and began to theorize about the swiftness of life. I often
wonder. Was the man aware of what was being said around him as he lay dying? Was he
offended at such thoughtlessness? Was he angered by it? Disgusted? I remember that
he had a sense of humor. Did he appreciate the humor of dying during an impromptu
discussion of his own death? No matter. He died easily, right there by the elevator, not
one hour after his usual breakfast with his wife and children ....
Our pain, our death must be exclusive, otherwise they cannot have meaning and
they might even turn out to be trite. Those who know hospitals, know that selfishness and
resentment are the natural reaction of those who have not developed professional
defense mechanisms. And probably, for that matter, of those who have developed
them. And though we abhor our reaction, we cannot rid ourselves of it or at least of its
immediate onslaught. Even if we happen not to be in pain at the moment, we resent the
pain and fear of others. We resent because we cannot defend ourselves from the misery
of others. We resent that we are expected to be sympathetic just when we need desperately
to be selfish. We resent being reminded that we are mortal, especially right now,
when we are vulnerable. We resent being frightened by death, we are terrified because
we know that we too will suffer.
I have a happy story and an unhappy story here. (Upon beginning) to recover from
surgery in Germany I was taken to a ward (full oo ... workers in the some department of
the Bundesbohn. For some reason they were all Silesians in the state of Hesse, they spoke
in a vernacular it took me days to decipher. They were the some age. They suffered the
same gastrointestinal disorders caused, as I learned, by identical experiences of war
and malnutrition. They had served in the same transportation unit on the Russian front,
were taken prisoner together, worked in the camps together, were repatriated together
many years after the war ended. They were cheerfully resigned to their ailments, they
were adept at whiling away the hours and the pain by discussing, in endless technical
detail, their handling of millions of tons of heavy invasion equipment.
To the degree that my pain subsided, I began to participate in their community. I listened
to their war stories — the one I like best was about their comrade who was so
conscientious about following orders that he delivered a truckload of arms at precisely the
right time and at precisely the right place even though he knew the Russians were there
to take him prisoner .... On weekends they introduced me to their families, each
obviously pleased to include me in his family circle, much as if they had adopted me as
an honorable comrade, Strangely, they like Russians, they remembered not cruelty, but
kindnesses.... Every day in every way I got better and better, when I was taken away the
pain was bearable.
It was drizzling when I was wheeled down corridors and across lawns to a different
hospital in the complex. The new ward was small with glossy white walls and huge
double doors that closed with a hollow boom when the nurse left. The men in the other
five beds were not working-class, they were not comrades, neither were they outgoing.
They were old, si lent, sick. Their sights and sounds were of men beyond recall, Quavering
heads and drooling mouths, swollen feet, uncaring eyes ....
Directly across the room lay Herr Linz, a small man, dapper, perhaps once a clerk,
lawyer, teacher. Herr Linz was more alert than the others, and he was younger. He smiled
at me once or twice, spoke to the attendants and nurses when spoken to. On the third
day, in the late afternoon, Herr Linz fell into a tormentor anxiety, began hyperventilating,
clutched at his chest in pain. Doctors and nurses came running with a needle and an
oxygen tank, for almost an hour they worked frantically around his bed. None of the other
occupants of that ward paid any attention. So far as I could tell, Herr Linz suffered from
emphysema and a heart condition complicated by fear of death. Surely you must realize,
a doctor told him after a second incident the next morning, if you do not control your
anxiety you will provoke what you fear. Which reasonable advice promptly set off
another attack. Poor Herr Linz. He would lie there across the room trying not to think of the
obvious, yet waiting for what he could not prevent himself from causing. While I, sunk
back into my cocoon of selfish resentment, tried not to wait with him, tried determinedly
to ignore what I could not help.
Herr Linz did not die in the throes of an anxiety attack. One sunny afternoon, very late,
when the windows were open to a warm spring day, a sudden motion caught my
unguarded attention to the bed across the room. Herr Linz had suddenly propped himself
upon his left arm — the motion that caught my eye. At the instant I looked his way, his
right arm darted out to me in supplication. His black eyes pierced into mine and there
they remained, pushing me into the pillow, trapping his pleading form into my awareness.
I waited. What did the man want from me? Only after a minute or two, my resentment
growing, did I realize that Herr Linz was dead, had died at the instant he caught my
attention. His black eyes held me, and there I remained, there I waited even after I knew
he was dead. What was his plea? What did he want from me? How many minutes did
those dead eyes stare into mine before a nurse came in, swiftly unplugged the equipment
around his bed, rolled him from the ward?
As the bed moved out from the wall Herr Linz moved closer to me, directly at me. Then
the bed turned, the rigid corpse turned with it, the extended arm and pleading eyes
swung away from me to the door, the double doors boomed, Herr Linz was gone.
I often wonder. Was I the last image in Herr Linz's consciousness? Did he see me, was
he aware of me as he died? What did he want from me? Was it me for whom he reached,
or was I simply there in the place he happened to look? What could I have meant to him?
Might he not have reasoned that I, the only young man in the room, had life that could
strengthen his? Could I not have responded to one of his smiles in the days before? Surely
Herr Linz, whoever he was deserved at least that much for his long life. Surely he did.
What he got instead was resentment. For in the moment I realized I was staring into
the eyes of a dead man, I was filled with resentment. How dared the man die like that, his
eyes locked to mine? I could not give him life, I could not even give him comfort. I was
sick, dammit, I was depressed, what did I have to give him?
Once, at Christmas time, I found myself in another hospital, again without sufficient
warning. My roommate, whom I occasionally glimpsed past our respective sets of bed
curtains, turned out to be a young black boy with a sing-song Caribbean accent,
perhaps no more than fifteen years old, perhaps much older... (I) gathered that the boy
was in considerable distress from drug addiction. Much bargaining with nurses went on
behind those curtains when it was time to beg for a shot. With the nurses he played either
the macho charmer or the pitiful little boy, and though they knew perfectly well he was
conning them, he sometimes prevailed over their coaxing to wait just a little bit longer.
The doctors were more gruff, particu larly the older one in charge, by whom the boy was
greatly awed .... But the boy often got what he needed from this doctor too ....
I assumed the treatment behind those curtains involved the weaning of an addict
from the needle. This afternoon I had learned that the addiction was incidental, the
boy's real problem was sickle cell anemia. This evening, when he came to introduce
himself, the twenty-third of December, was a pleasant one. A wonderful Christmas snow
was falling outside our frosted windows, a small blinking tree had been set up outside our
door that day, carolers song their way up and down the corridor during visiting hours. The
boy's afternoon distress had subsided into a pleasant evening tranquility. Our curtains
had been pulled back, after a while he began calling over to ask if the program on my
television was more interesting than the one on his. He had beautiful white teeth and a
devastatingly charming smile. He was just over five feet tall, he did not so much walk or
limp as scoot. He wore only his underpants in the warm room, he was not at all self-
conscious about a crooked left leg, a right shoulder hunched forward, a stooped back —
.. (He) explained without preamble or apology how each injury had been incurred. His
leg was broken when he was hit by a car. Poor mama, no one told her about the accident,
she had searched all night before finding him in the hospital. His arm was mangled
by an old-fashioned laundry wringer. Poor mama, she left him alone in the laundry room
for only a moment he was so small she never thought he could reach that high .... He
was going to call mama soon. He was going to make her happy with reports of good
behavior and a promise not to deal with those men on the street again.
I tried not to eavesdrop when he returned to his bed and picked up the phone .... I
learned that she, too, was dying of sickle cell anemia. There was anxiety in his voice, and
despair and manly efforts to console, and a little boy's pleas for mama to comfort him.
There was expectation of a happy future time, he and mama together, there was dread
of no future at all, neither for him, neither for mama. They described pain to each other,
he advised heron tactics and strategies for gaining relief, he went back to charming her,
he went back to begging her.
In the middle of the night I was awakened by his weeping. He began to talk, this time
to himself, charming himself as he charmed others. He sang and crooned, giggled and
chattered, and all the time the pain grew, his voice filled with distress. And he told
himself, among other things, that he would hold it off, he would not ring, he would please
mama and make his doctor like him, and he would get better, and mama would get
better too, and they would find a place to live together, and he would work and they
would be happy. I thought I should say something. I thought I should cross the room and
sit on his bed and talk to him. But what does a man who is not in pain say to a boy who is,
and what does a man whose wife and children are coming to take him home for
Christmas say to a boy whose mother is dying at Christmas, who is himself dying at
Christmas?
When I left in the morning I went to his bed and shook his hand and wished him a
merry Christmas. But his eyes were rolled back in a stupor, he did not reply, he did
not smile.
In the hospital in Nova Scotia I shared a small ward ... with a very old, very huge dying
man named Charlie. In this hospital I was sometimes in pain, sometimes not, sometimes
miserable, never cheerful. Charlie was eighty-three years old, a fact I learned from the
eleven brothers and sisters who took turns sitting with him each day. He did not usually
respond to them, but they did what they could to ease his physical discomfort and sometimes
he rewarded them by emerging from his coma and smiling with appreciation. An
intravenous apparatus filled his veins through the days and nights, twice each day he
filled a urine bag hanging att he side of his bed. He breathed loudly and with great effort
through an oxygen mask; part of his sibling's administrations involved spraying the cracked
interior of his dry mouth and throat ....
I spent two anxious, sleepless, resentful nights listening to Charlie fight for every
breath. His head trembled on the pillow with each effort, and his body quivered from
head to foot as at times he groaned .... Late the third night I sat up and watched him
over there in the corner beneath a night lamp. He was truly a huge man. He had spent his
entire life in the woods, he had never been sick he was known all around for his size and
strength. Now, a broken hip refused to mend, his heart and liver were steadily failing, his
legs and feet were swollen, his awareness was almost gone, he strained to hang on to life.
I thought I wanted him to die. I hoped he would die. Not, thank God, out of resentment
this time, but because I pitied him. But Charlie did not die, each time I thought his breath
had stopped he caught it again, until I began to realize he did not want to die, he was
not ready to die, he was hanging on to life even though it was hopeless for him to go on
living .... He fought on, mightily, and I sat there watching and listening, and somehow I
lost my anxiety about myself and went to sleep, and when I woke in the morning my pain
was gone. Charlie was still fighting the next day. I heard his oxygen apparatus gasp and
shudder when I walked away down the corridor ....
The four men who shared the glossy white room with Herr Linz and me are surely dead
now... Some of the German soldier-workers from the Russian front must have died since,
although I hope most of them are alive and well. I do not know what became of the
veteran with the unpleasant spots on his body ....
I like to imagine that Charlie is still alive, still fighting the way he was when I walked
away down the corridor, still holding on to precious life with all his mighty strength. The
living know they will die, the dead know nothing, we are told. The universe is not aware of
us, and does not reply, but we are aware of it. I know very well that Charlie is dead, but I
like to think that he chose to die, on his own terms, of his own free will. For if Charlie fought
it out until he was ready to choose his death, then I can choose my time too. We can all
reply. Heresy means "I choose," we should all want to choose, we should all know life is
worth fighting mightily for, that it is worth fear and pain, that fear and pain can overcome.
For if Charlie died by choice, then we can choose to overcome our selfishness.
But l cannot forget such sights, and worse. I remember the black boy and his mama..
and all such things I have seen when life goes wrong. I remember what pain does to
human will, that we whimper in fear of death rather than regret for life, that death is
lonely and selfish. I remember that resentment is immediately more strong than compassion,
and know thi seven though I regret it is so. I want to be a heretic, I think we should
all be heretics, but I know this is not so even though I regret it is not so.
"Larry Gregg"
University Center
First Place Prize Winner
Tribute To An Impatient Persistent Man
Of Ehrlich and Atoxyl
Think of Solvarsan when they sleep tonight
Not they who wrestled the fear of shame
Nor those who gave themselves to his enchantment
But they who forge a forgetful nod when
Ehrlich, Paul Ehrlich, is called.
Remembering the hasty flight to Egypt
The mineral water, cigars, cigars and
Kadereit, who gave and listened, Kadereit
Whose mastered measure, whose unquenchable devotion
Reflected that of Ehrlich
To fine line drawings on colorful blocks
To long hours over beer, pouring over mysteries
Of fiction and of Nature
Of magic bullets and of dreams.
Sometimes the mindful watch of
Guarded schooling hastily closes the fervent temper
That bridled fear, that ordered courage
To destroy the leaming so highly held
And renew the sinew that boldly saw
A hoped for end to circumstance dim.
When Ehrlich, Paul Ehrlich, touches the tongue
The generation of scorn for all that is old
All that patterns not the present rhyme
Should cease tearing and, with,
An open mind, and
With all deliberate confession
Smile at the thought of an effort, of a man
Of radiant ardour divine.
F.J. Papatheofanis
Graduate College
"We must search for magic bullets. We must strike the parasites, and the parasites only, if possible, and to do this,
we must learn to aim with chemical substances."
Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915) expressed this attitude toward disease and dedicated himself to understanding the
processes responsible for suffering and death at their most fundamental level. Ehrlich was the founder of
chemotherapy but his work benefited every field of biomedicine. His major therapeutic success came with the
development of the arsenic compound Salvarsan. This drug specifically destroyed the spirochete Treponema pallidum —
the organism responsible for syphilis and the immeasurable damage to mankind resulting from its infection. For
his work, Ehrlich received many honors including the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology in 1908. Ehrlich's was a
most colorful personality and the man radiated a true and lofty dedication to science and human progress.
Epitomus Medicus
When a patient look at an overweight doctor — will he lose weight?
When a smoker looks at this cig-puffing doc — will he quit?
I wonder how I will be when I finish my medical education?
Will I be insulated from my patient's emotional needs?
Will I hide behind the shades of status?
Will I be "tired to the bone?"
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Go to Photograph |
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Martin Herman
College of Medicine '87 |
Flaws in the Striated Muscle Flesh
The late Dr. Maury Miller, my uncle, was a sort of walking contradiction of some of
the most confident theories of his fellow resurrection-men. Where our culture is obsessively
concerned with a body of lean flowing lines and perfectly proportioned fascia, Mr. Miller
took no part in this nonsense. For diet he cared precisely nothing, yet he lived to be 84. In
exercise he took so little interest that he never had a golf-stick or even a billiard-cue in his
hands, yet he was hale and hearty until his last brief illness. And to top it all, he came into
the world with the very sort of physique which, if the insurance statisticians are to be
believed, means certain death before 50.
Dr. Miller was hardly more than five feet six inches in height, but he must have
weighed close to 200 pounds. With his broad brow, fine eyes and neatly combed hair,
he was a very distinguished looking man, yet it would have been difficult to prove legally
that he had a neck. His massive head, in fact, sat directly on his sturdy chest, and a foot
below it there were the beginnings of a majestic paunch. This is the build, according to
the professors of such matters, that offers ideal soil for a long list of incurable malaises. It
spells high blood-pressure, kidney deterioration and heart disease. When it is combined
with a distaste for exercise, a habit of sitting up until all hours of the night and an
enlightened appreciation of each and ever variety of sound food and drink, it is tantamount,
so we are told, to being sentenced to die in the electric chair at 45. Yet, Dr.
Miller lived 14 years and 22 days beyond the canonical three-score and ten and had a
grand time to the end. And when he died at last it was not of any of the diseases his
colleagues had been collecting themselves and had been warning him against for
60 years.
A year or so before his death I happened to sit beside him one day at lunch. The
main dish was country ham and greens, and of it he ate a large portion, washing it down
with several mugs of beer. There followed lemon meringue pie. He ate an arc of at least
75 degrees of it and eased it into his system with a cup of coffee. Then he lighted a six-
inch panatela and smoked it to the butt. Next, he ambled off to attend a medical meeting
and to prepare for dinner. The night before, so I gathered from his talk, he had been to
a banquet, and sat until 11:30 listening to bad speeches and breathing tobacco smoke.
The wines had been good enough for him to remember and mention them. Returning to
his bachelor quarters, he had read until 1:00 and then turned in. (Although not before his
usual night-cap of Canadian Club.)
What are we to gather, friends, from Dr. Welch's chart? Simply that pathology is still
far from an exact science, especially in the area of forecasting. In the presence of what
are assumed to be causes, the expected effects do not always or necessarily follow. Here
was a man who stood admired by his contemporaries of the medical profession, and yet
his whole life was a refutation of some of its most confident generalizations. He lived to be
pallbearer to scores of colleagues who made 36 holes of golf a week a religious rite, and
to scores more who went on strict diets at 30 and stuck to them heroically until they died
at 50 or 60.
With all of the rhetoric just given I cannot help but think of myself who at 24,
exercises frequently, avoids smoke, drug and sometimes alcohol while downing milk
colored vitamin placebos every day. I could see the coroner's report now. DEATH OF
NATURAL CAUSES, AGE 42.
Gary Fisher
College of Pharmacy '86
Onward Christian Soldiers!
Jacqueline Jones
Occupational Therapy
This poem was the result of a visit to the local VA hospital at the time that
the wounded were coming in from the war in Vietnam, They could be
transferred back to this country, treated short term in military hospitals
and discharged to the VA within weeks, if their wounds were sufficiently
serious to negate their returning to the battlefront. The ones I remember
fit this category.
Damocles' Sword
old, rough women washing hair
multitudes sitting in a church
the old man fans himself on a bench
I see eccentric technologists
I see a blind and passive public
I see some evil politicians
large, contented turtle resting in the lake
old lion panting in the sun
sleek black jaguar running through the trees
I see missiles rise
I see red lights flashing
I see chaotic crowds
delightful coolness of fresh cotton
embracing comfort of a friend
sun's warm light on my body
I see a flash of light
I see melted eyes
I see fallen bodies
music of Bach and paintings of Miro
beautiful embroideries of the eighteenth century
delicate painting on Chinese porcelain
The Earth is no more
Life is gone
The planet is cold
Kyrie eleison.
I am submitting this poem to be considered for publication in the literary/arts magazine of the Health Sciences Center because I believe that
nuclearism is the greatest threat to public health today. Though at a
recent meeting of the Physicians for Social Responsibility I heard that
40% of America's medical schools address the health implications of
nuclearism in their curricula, most schools of health (including those at
the UICHSC) still do not.
Mary Z. Kohák
College of Nursing '85
Second Place Prize Winner
The Medicine Man
The medicine man
sang the song of healing
danced the dance of a thousand years
and saved a few from the gods of death
and the spears flew
The medicine man
looked down lenses at the little animals
a mold became a drug
that saved some from the clutches of death
and the bullets flew
The medicine man
looked at films of the inside of chests
and the blade became a tool
that saved more from the hand of death
and the armies grew
One day
the leaders shouted
the missiles screamed
the atoms collided
the sky cracked
the earth flashed
smouldered
and grew
dark.
In a tiny tribe that survived
a medicine man sang the song of healing
danced the dance of two thousand years
but could save no one from the hands of man
and the wind blew.
John Weber
College of Medicine '87
Pioneers of New Frontiers: Baby Fae and David
Mary Vanko
College of Medicine '87
Learning
In pathology
they spoke of sarcoma
how it comes to be
what we must see
They spoke of cancer
in preventive med.
theories of origin
epidemiology
In pharmacology
they spoke of chemotherapy
combinations of drugs
treatment strategy
Nobody spoke of my friend
who fit no theory
who'd been perfectly well
who came down with sarcoma
Nobody said how different it'd be
as I read of this illness
now if s him on that page
and it's different, you see
as my friend lost his leg
not just words anymore
amputation for real
nobody said how he would feel
Nobody said how the chemo. would be
for months it's gone on
such immense terrible suffering
how ill he could be
But he has endured
taught me all that they couldn't
of determination and strength
courage and will
Not any book, not any class
will teach what I've learned
will teach what he's taught me
my friend who's been ill
Eduardo Rueda
College of Medicine '87
Honorable Mention
This Place
Praise
for a prominent University
Admiration
for an admirable institution
No not here
No not ever
Where humanity is in error
emotion is forbidden
to err is to die
slowly
Where physicians are made
the lesson is learned
attitudes for life
stay forever
Some won't forget
what happened in this place —
never
Anonymous
Chrysalis
Enter a hard-faced beamish boy
Having vanquished much,
Ventured little.
Popular accolades he's gleaned,
Toward a point abstract, untrue.
Now a youth of knowing eyes
Softened heroism
Risking hurt.
Friends of the weak and frail he makes,
Remembers faces, hurtful traces.
Feel the old man's hand go cold,
A child's smile stolen,
Cold swords plunged deep.
He bleeds, but no one knows the cracks
And no one sees. Healing slow.
Go a man of work and love
Of open hands,
A part and whole.
Giving strength and sharing learning,
Feeling life — empty shells cast behind.
Tony Bravo
College of Medicine '87
To Mildred
You were 83 and died from breast cancer. That's all of the informa-
tion that the code on your tag would reveal to us. Despite this, we would
come to know you intimately in the course of six months in anatomy
lab.
We named you Mildred. Naming you kept you human in our eyes,
something more than an anatomical tool. It took time before we overcame
the initial uneasiness caused by you, the human body in the
black plastic bag. We were repulsed by the odor of the formalin and the
leatheriness of your skin and embarrassed at your nakedness.
Your thin body had been ravished by the effects of cancer. Even
though you had had a mastectomy, your cancer had metastasized. All
your organs in the abdominal cavity had grown together into a huge
ball. You must have suffered, Mildred, the pain of your last days being
relieved by morphine. Was it in this pain that you consented to make this
steel tank your casket and to share with us the secrets of your body and
the mechanisms of disease?
Twice a week from September to March you would teach us. We
would gingerly separate your atrophied muscles searching for the hidden
vessels, meticulously separating the fibers of your muscles and fascia to
your bony framework. Cracking your sternum, we would enter your chest
and eagerly dissect out your lungs and heart. Your fist-sized heart, having
powered your body for 83 years, was entrusted to us, five anonymous
students, thirsty for knowledge. Upon opening your abdomen, we were
horrified. None of us will ever forget the ravages of cancer on your
body.
Upon unwrapping the gauze from your face we would discover
you to have fine features and blue eyes. Your beauty must have been
striking in earlier times. We wondered, "Did you marry and have
children? Were they there at the end?"
We continued the dissection, uneasy again in February. Though
we had dissected your body, we hadn't seen your face. It was then that
you reminded us of our own humanness. Your gelatinous brain had
thought, your body had loved. You were probably someone's mother,
grandmother, lover or wife. We would be like you in death, cold and still.
Yet, in death you were still "giving" by helping the five of us.
Mildred, it's hard to describe what we feel. From initial uneasiness,
we grew to respect you for what you were teaching us. For what you
have given us, we thank you. A part of you lives on the minds of each of
us. You, much more than Dr. Monsen or even Drs. Moore, Clemente, or
Gray, have been our anatomy teacher.
Mary Vanko
College of Medicine '87
Notes in Class
Life begins in chalk.
The embryology professor draws lines
in different colors.
"They fuse together."
Oh.
"That's how it gets that way."
His one-dimensional figures,
enlarged beyond belief.
"Maternal cells are killed by the embryo."
The new generation reduced
to a clump of cells.
A medical student, still not in chalk,
wonders:
If all the shining research labs
in chrome splendor
could share the secrets
of that rounded, unknowing girl
and that new life within . . .
But no.
The cavern buried in the girl
will stay buried.
She does not care
for the biology in her belly.
It grows. She is happy.
The embryologist is happy.
He will discover new lines,
find new colors to draw.
"Placental circulation has been worked out."
The system remains
separate.
Chalk and mothers blood do not mix.
Shiny journals aloof
from that saving warm water.
"The birth canal —"
Canals are for boats.
Almost comic almost tragic.
The ignorance of the technicians,
the wisdom of that unyielding force.
Bonnie Salomon
College of Medicine '87
Lessons
It's MY turn! I want to take a turn,
Exchange passive pedagogy for active academia.
Scientific salesmen's ceremonious sermons sating
My cerebrum submissively silent —
So slice me a wedge of self-determination
Now that it's my turn ... not yours.
It's OUR turn! We're off on a journey,
Laboratory pilgrims travelling to the shrine.
"Look at this! Come down here! What's that? Get help!
Then look in this cavern, too."
Poking and probing, picking and peeking —
Now that it's our turn ... not yours.
It's MY turn? May I pass this time?
Anatomically arrogant answers assault acolytes,
Urgent aromas from cold cadaverous cavities haunting
Incision-reflection-dissection precision,
The dead teach the living about life
Now that it's our turn ... not theirs.
(Pilgrimage is now a race:
Acolytes towards The Knowledge,
The dead towards their decays.
Can either contestant manage
their finish line?)
NO WAY! My turn is over now.
Vile airs cruelly impersonating smoked bacon,
Pervasive putrefaction, in payment to the priests
For phenolic purgatorial passion.
And the shrine yet gleams on the Horizon
Because it's their turn ... not ours.
Greg Olson
College of Medicine '88
12844
I cannot think ...
It is too late for this wisdom to appear
Embodied in such careless form
With yet such strength - in fluid charm.
But I am trained to see debility ...
Green and gold, and red, and dead.
Time passes, a howling presence
Who has the final triumph when the final man is bled?
And this garden still in adolescence.
Beyond, the breath of Eolus groans.
Hints of power, of birth infinite
It licks all there — until, until one cannot dare
anymore, and then it is white.
Ah! A purity gained, by nature's loss
What says the one, to this bold idea?
A pity no one asks the cost
In one's wet tomb they'll miss what's real.
Scott McKee
Graduate College
The Fertilizer
As John sat down to take over his shift in the Conception Center he took a sip of pop
and asked for the current embryo status. The display showed that fertilization output was
normal and spontaneous abortions were in the expected range before 16 cell divisions,
but there was a flashing line that showed half a percent above average spontaneous
abortions at the end of liver formation, John answered yes to the screen's request for permission
to log an automatic hormone series in the autopsies. Other than this things were
going as expected, and pretty much as they had for the last several years. The embryo
boys would enjoy hashing this one out, anyway. They thought they were about to end
the liver problems once and for all, which would give John's Conception Center the
lowest rate of abortion in the country.
John gave a brief thought to an old question: how do shirt sleeves get turned inside
out in the washer? That cosmic question still as elusive as ever, he thought to himself how
strange his world was now, unlike anything he could have imagined when he had been
in medical school. The world had turned practically upside down since then. John had
been a prochoicer when there were such people. Then Vice President Shrub had been
assassinated by a large explosive charge planted under the street and command
detonated, Irish Republican Army style. The car had been disintegrated along with its
occupants. The press speculated for awhile that this was likely the work of right-to-lifers,
since they had been engaged in terrorist bombings for some time. But somehow the call
to the Washington Post, claiming that Planned Parenthood had planned and financed
the assassination stuck, with the help of a high level cover up using evidence manufactured
in the world's best crime lab.
Soon there was media and congressional hysteria against prochoicers of all kinds,
it felt very much like Watergate. Planned Parenthood and all prochoice activities and
sex education programs were ended among shrill rhetoric emanating mainly from
Reverend Harry Caldwell, a strict fundamentalist Vermonter whose organization, the
Moral Monopoly, certainly knew what was right for everyone all the time. The whole thing
just sort of caught on in a serendipitous snowballing effect from the "conservative
mood" of the country that had reelected President Fagin. To great roars of approval in
most media the President nominated Reverend Caldwell to the vice presidency. The
Jews were the first to let it be known that they would veto this unprecedented violation
of church-state separation, but they were convinced by a secret defense treaty with
Israel, making Israel almost a U.S. state with all the privileges but no taxes and complete
political autonomy, with a proviso for reduced aid to arab countries. The Catholics
weren't far behind the Jews, but they were convinced by guarantees of complete
government support of their school system including transportation and assurance that
they would be free to practice Catholicism, but with less competition from cults and
other upstart non mainline groups. The deal was sweetened for everyone by guarantees
that forthcoming medical services contracts would be divied up proportionately
among those three major churches.
That did it. Reverend Caldwell was confirmed to the Vice Presidency. At the some
time he was given expanded authority in the post of Secretary of Morality. The last few
intellectuals who questioned this were shouted down, and in some cases beaten up or
killed by Caldwell supporters. The whole thing just swept on like a firestorm. As Vice
President and Secretary of Morality Reverend Caldwell was given the additional
responsibilities to write a code of civil and moral conduct for the United States, and as importantly, to
nominate and qualify new members of the Supreme Court and all federal judgeships.
Soon an antiabortion amendment was added to the constitution and was ratified quickly
and easily by the states. It established, among other things, that it is self evident that a
fertilized egg is fully human with full constitutional rights.
There was a significant increase in maternal mortality, since abortion was not
permitted for ANY reason, and the fetus' life was always given priority if a choice had to be
made, or the doctor would lose his license. There was also an increase in illegal abortions,
but with government funding great resources of the FBI, state and local law enforcement
were put into detecting and registering pregnancy and monitoring pregnant
women to be sure that they did not attempt abortion by any means. All people involved
in an attempted abortion, including the woman, were prosecuted for first degree murder,
in most cases successfully. There were Caldwell people in every emergency room
and labor and delivery ward, and there was a $5000 reward for information leading to
the conviction of people involved in an abortion. This naturally increased the suicide rate
and prison populations, but psychiatry was working on ways to make all women happy
with their natural role, even if they had been raped. Soon the overall problem was solved
by requiring all women from age six to clinically demonstrated menopause to have a
monthly pregnancy test (in school for those attending), paid for by the government.
Those women who failed to comply were subject to fines or imprisonment. Of course all
forms of conception control were outlawed except rhythm. Sex education classes
became pregnancy induction classes. This had the effect of reducing education for
women, hastening the return to a quieter society. Possession of conception control
devices or information was made a first degree felony, and possession of rhythm method
information was a serious misdemeanor. lt was heartwarming to see the nation return to
God-given fundamental values. Active membership in a major church and holding a
job went together like motherhood and apple pie.
All this was justified by the now self evident facts that human life began at
conception and that human life was INFINITELY valuable. With the implicit understanding that
younger life was more valuable that older life, the rights of the unborn exceeded in every
case the rights of the born, which dictated the sacrifice of the mother when a choice had
to be made. Literally NO resource could be spared under the new morality to assure that
the unborn were born. During the long anticipated change of style of currency, a new
national slogan was printed on all paper money and stamped into all new coins, "In
God We Trust, the Rights of the Unborn".
One of the country's most famous satirist newspaper columnists wrote a piece that
asked a simple question: if a single cell at conception is infinitely valuable, then why isn't
an unfertilized egg or sperm half as valuable? And since half of infinity is still infinity, why
aren't all of a woman's unfertilized eggs and a man's sperm infinitely valuable and
worthy of saving by enforced fertilization? This was intended to be a preposterous joke,
but Reverend Caldwell, on considering the matter with God, decided that it wasn't a
joke. The technology was available from work that had been done on cattle. Conception
Centers were set up and every month women were required to surrender their unfertilized
ovulated egg(s), or to just give up their ovaries, which were then kept. This didn't
take care of the sperm for which there were no eggs(about 4 million per ejaculation) but
at least it was a first step.
While all this was going on a side plot was evolving. It turned out that Reverend
Caldwell's niece had just graduated from nursing school. She had been influenced
heavily by a Ph.D. in nursing who, along with most of the faculty, believed that most
medical care could and should be provided by nurses, not doctors. This was a cracker-
jack idea whose time had come. The government had already acted to reduce and
control hospital charges and doctor fees for most diagnoses. Disliking doctors had
become an essentially universal national pastime. A high school student had
developed a general medical diagnosis program for Apple computers that was better
than most doctors in practice, and it was blended into this scheme. Laws were passed
which made nurses the first line of health care, fully licensed to practice non-emergency
and nonsurgical medicine, and most emergency medicine. Retention of license was
contingent on continuing education and favorable bedside manner ratings from
patients. Non surgeon MD's become nurses aids, and surgeons and emergency MD's
became paramedics on modest salary. Suddenly it was nursing school that was almost
impossible to get into, and a third of the medical schools in the country closed while
others expanded their nursing schools or converted to nursing exclusively.
John had not specialized in surgery and couldn't get into any of the special doctor
to nurse training programs. But there was such a surplus of physicians now that the
Conception Centers were manned mainly by MD's, since fertilization was a pseudosurgical
procedure. Sicne he was essentially unemployable in any other line, John became a
fertilizer, one the doctors who monitored the in-vitro fertilization of the nation's eggs that
weren't fertilized naturally.
Needless to say, at the end of nine months or so of this someone asked the question:
what are we going to do with these babies? The crisis was immediate, with little time for
congressional debate. There simply was not enough money, or people, or space or food
in the world to support all those children. To sacrifice adults to make space for them
would worsen the problem, and there weren't nearly enough adults anyway. Adults
were beginning to let their congressmen know that things had gone about as far as they
would be allowed to, and Congress observed uneasily that adults still did all the voting.
So it was decided, with Reverend Caldwell's acquiescence, to go back to the fundamental
precept of the original Right to Life movement. Unborn life was more important than life
after birth. So artificially conceived fetuses no one wanted would be born
and given a day of care and comfort, then humanely sacrificed and processed to make
nutrient for the unborn. The Defense Department had a small high security building off to
the side where some of the unwanted newborns went, but no one knew what happened
there.
John thought about another cosmic question: how does that strand of spaghetti
always escape the colander and get into the sink, no matter how careful the cook? Then
he thought of a conversation he had with a long time friend, Howie, when such things
could be discussed. Howie had always said that each country contributed two important
things to the world; France had contributed the guillotine and the bidet, and
England had contributed the Magna Carta and Benny Hill. John had predicted in a light
moment that something like this could happen. Howie had long since been killed by a
Caldwell mob. He was on duty in one of the last family planning clinics when a torch
parade of right-to-lifers reached it. TV crews and police stood around watching and taping
as they shouted, "Burn the murderers!", and threw torches onto and into the clinic.
They chanted, "Right-to-life! Rights of the unborn! Burn the murderers!", and laughed
and shouted when a man emerged completely on fire, collapsing after a few feet. It
might have been Howie. A real yell went up when the roof fell in and they jumped up and
down with joy, still chanting and holding hands in celebration of the sacredness of life
and the rights of the unborn. Howie, eight other staff members and 11 patients ages 12 to
30 and their relatives burned to death in that fire. Five children were orphaned and 14
more left with one parent. The firemen present did nothing more than protect adjacent
buildings. It was quite a spectacle on the evening news. At the time Caldwell still could
not be forth-right, but his statement for himself and the President did not veil their
pleasure and approval, and you should have seen his beaming face. No investigation or
prosecution was being entertained at any level despite the clear tape of those who led
the march and did the burning. In fact, that day became somewhat of an unofficial
holiday, observed every year, because it marked the closing of family planning facilities
throughout the country once and for all, The burners made the talk show rounds and,
bible in hand, proudly proclaimed their determination to exterminate any remaining
baby killers who dared to show their satanic faces. One often-replayed sequence
showed one of the leaders of the march saying to the throng, "Too bad we didn't bring
any marshmallows and weenies," which replaced the inspired, far-away smiles with
laughter. The flames themselves laughed and grinned, twinkled and celebrated in
those far-away eyes as they had throughout history whenever the good burned the evil.
In that last conversation with John, a few days before his death, Howie had said,
chuckling, "This country is built on freedom from religious persecution and respect for the
right of free people to choose. That couldn't happen here!" John thought back fondly
and ironically to a time when Howie would have been right.
"Jack Reilly"
Health Sciences Center
untitled
ha
(h
ow
bi
in
d
Pe
op
le
se
e)
nd
S.
(apologies to ee cummings)
Mary Vanko
College of Medicine '87
Checking into Rama Clinic
Hazy stars
A lonely man watches from afar.
Squirrelous breezes,
treetops quiver over sleeping bazaars.
Elusive sky
Through the misting comes a sigh.
Oddball at a tea stall
sips stale chai.
Smoke arises
parts for natives of all sizes.
Crinkled blind beggar ...
satans prowl in many guises!
Death, really
Golden sari wraps a shrivelled belly.
An infant smiles
with heart to grow in old New Delhi,
Scott McKee
Graduate College
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This magazine was created in the hope that a new voice could be heard on the
Health Sciences campus. This new voice, creative and clear, is an alternative to the
sound of facts, details, and "cold science." Submissions to Body Electric deal with the
theme of health care and education in the health professions. Contributors include
medical students, graduate students, nursing students, and other UIC students and staff.
The top three entries were judged, and awarded prize money.
Special thanks go to: Suzanne Poirier, Ph.D., for her assistance and guidance
throughout the project, Bill Mayer for his illustration; Marilyn Foy, Ph.D., for help in judging
all entries: Hyman Muslin, M.D., for final judging: Bernice Coleman for typing and clerical
work, and the Humanistic Studies Program and the Executive Student Council for providing the funds that made this publication possible.
—Bonnie Salomon
| Editor: |
BONNIE SALOMON
College of Medicine '87 |
|
| Advisor: |
SUZANNE POIRIER, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of
Literature and Health Care |
|
| Design: |
BILL MAYER
Dept. of Biocommunications Arts |
