MR. JACKSON

Old black rag.
Soaked through with ammonia
Lying limp, still alive.


Plastic tentacles invade everywhere,
Sucking up, spitting out inky juices.


He opens his mouth to let his
Self escape:
Low dark moan,
Still alive, he is all used up.


I say take the octopus off.
Let him explode with fluid:
Fireworks under water. Let him
Dry and blow away,
A newspaper on a city street.

Catherine Murphy
College of Nursing, '87

---

"HEY, KID"

"Hey, kid, gonna draw my blood?"
well I wish you luck
'Cause it's not quick to find.
You can pierce my skin,
You can pierce my soul, but
Blood is life and mine's running out.


You know, kid, I was a man once;
Chest a barrel, I inhaled the world, and
my eyes were shards of crystal brass,
clear and
Trumpeting to the sky
Who I was;
who I am is
old flesh, keeping an I.V. alive.


Hey, kid, someone loved me once.
I was touched, and there was warmth;
Someone spoke and raised my face to the sun.
Now it's cold, it's cold, it's cold;
Some say live, some say die,
but it's all the same—
Purgatory on earth.


So tell me, kid, what's a life worth?
Numbers run up while numbers run down—
They say it's all a wash,
though I never stopped to count, and
God, I hurt, I hurt, I hurt;
Life is love
but what of that
When death wears the smile of a friend.


"Hey, kid, gonna draw my blood?"
I'll give you my arm, I'll give you my hand
But tell me, kid—
will you give me yours?

Steven H. Kroft
College of Medicine, '90
First Place Prize Winner

---

WORK TO DO

"You must be getting a lot of work done," said Sonya, drawing in on a cigarette, the smoke wafting from her pretty mouth as she talked. "Now that you're single again."

Yep, I thought. Sure. Last year, at 29, I'd moved from my Oceanside LA apartment to tough, gutsy Chicago, internal medicine residency completed. I'd spurned two offers some residents would have jumped at—one at a chic UCLA-affiliated hospital, and the other with a Long Beach private practice group. I never seriously considered private practice—fee payment for service seemed to make medical care too much like any other business. Six dollars per suture and $125 per history and physical implied to me that we should have sales, or at least advertise our prices, a market theory I didn't want to follow.

So I chose a fellowship in medical ethics. Practicing medicine was good work, but I was so busy diagnosing and treating disease that there was no time to think about either the patients whom I was seeing or the patients who couldn't afford to be seen. The University of Chicago offered me a year of fellowship support in clinical ethics. I would read and learn about how to approach moral problems in patient care, and be better equipped to help those who couldn't help themselves.

"Ethics, huh?" my friends asked. "Are you going to practice medical ethics? Are there jobs in that? You're going to teach, right?" For physicians in training, practice practicality was the bottom line. Academicians generally had little interest in patients and less clinical expertise. "Those who can't do, teach; those who can't teach, administrate" rung loudly in my ears.

Heather had said she would go to Chicago too. "Chicago's not my first choice," she said, "but you are." Heather was from Maine and had the rugged common sense and crispness of a fall Portland morning. She was terrific—jet black hair, Irish green eyes and long legs, toned by beach volleyball. We had met in my hospitals ICU where she was a visiting resident from County and fell in love immediately after the rotation was over. With every third night call, there was no other time.

That was in November. In December, we were evicted from our apartment. "It's sold," slimed the real estate man. What the hell, we said. We were going to England anyway. We saw London, Cornwall, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, staying in bed-and-breakfasts and tasting Glenmorangie aside Glen Elgin aside Macallam, making love every night to keep warm.

Then it was March. I began to feel uneasy. The University had sent me a contract to sign. Research projects, medical students and clinic patients were mine and waiting. Did I want to be in the ICU first or attend on the General Medicine wards?

Heather started to worry me, too. She was looking forward to a leisurely summer. She would not work. She would windsurf on Lake Michigan, learn the locations of all the Asian markets and grow her own lemon grass. Her Emergency Medicine friends—blond, tan and beautifully blue-eyed to a man—would come to windsurf, too. In between, she would study for her Emergency Medicine Boards.

Nevertheless, last July, Heather and I moved to Chicago. I couldn't be home for the van, so Heather helped the Mayflower men. I couldn't be home to unpack at first, so Heather did most of it. After all, I thought, it's mostly her stuff. I couldn't be home a lot; it seemed that the fellowship was more than 9-5. I struggled to become accepted by my new superiors and peers, reading and learning and teaching all in the same class, all on the same patient. "This 82-year- old's renal failure is acute-on-chronic. With a base line creatinine of 4.0 and fifteen years of diabetes, he'll need dialysis within a year. Paul, what is Kimmelstiel-Wilson disease? Should advanced age be included in the allocation of scarce resources? What is distributive justice?"

I stayed later. The University bought me a word processor. Heather came to some of my suppertime seminars, but she had to work nights in the Emergency Room. When I came home, nearly half the time it seemed, she wasn't there. Where is she, I thought? Did she work nights when we were in LA?

We slept together only occasionally from then on— whenever we were both home. We chatted some and squabbled more. I felt a tremendous sense of emptiness. I'd made a mistake, but I didn't know what it was. Medicine was good—patients thanked me, nurses liked me, I liked both of them. Clinical ethics was good too—provocative, challenging, and—surprise!— practical. Heather was the problem—increasingly brusque, never around, and always forgetting to turn on the answering machine. She was never like this before.

Finally, we had it out. "I'm not really attracted to you anymore," I said as forcefully as I could. "I love you, but... "

"I can't believe that I let myself get sucked into this," she said. "I thought you were interested in being responsible. Making space for others is something you know nothing about."

I moved out the next week. I worked harder, staying past 11 to dictate discharge summaries and plug into cheaper computer time. After several months I called Heather. She wasn't home, but her answering machine took a message. She called back and we talked, deciding again we'd done the right thing, remembering and reminding about stray shoes and lost lamps, sounding cheerful, saying lunch some time, bye!

So, I work on my career. My Curriculum Vitae grows longer by the month; my mentors encourage me; my physician colleagues call to ask about withholding feedings from a comatose patient or telling an AIDS patient's wife that he has it. I teach principles, and give answers. Medical, socioeconomic and public policy issues attract my attention. I work too hard, and I wonder if I will know, next time, not to.

John LaPuma, M.D., Senior Fellow
The Center for Clinical Medical Ethics
Pritzker School of medicine
University of Chicago

---

AREA 40

Located in the supramarginal gyrus, responsible
For integration of the concept of self.


How little you know about it!
I have yet to bang my head against these rocks.


Damage results in loss of recognition
Of the contralateral side of the body.


Take care, for you may run up against so nasty a one
That your plan will come to an end.


The person does not recognize the other side
As belonging to himself.


Content yourself with striking your head
Against water or some soft thing.


The agnosia is so severe
That the person can neglect to wash that side.


At least I should like you to see me stripped.


Area 39 in the angular gyrus.
Damage affects the ability to describe.


Don't oblige me to see your worship naked.


A person can write a sentence
But cannot read it back.


Do a couple of them dressed up—but short ones.


Area 9 to 12, removed in prefrontal lobotomy.


Stripping off his breeches
He did two sommersaults


Results in loss of conception of the future.


With his head down and his legs in the air.


Used to treat intractable pain.
Patients continue to experience


Displaying such parts as drove Sancho
To turn Rozinante's bridle


Pain, but it no longer concerns them.


To prevent his seeing.

Jennifer Bleak
College of Medicine, '89
Honorable Mention

---

CADAVER LAB

From a step away, we returned to Padua
Galen and Vesalius, not their ghosts nor their memory
Entered with the corps, obliging, apologetic;
Aligned with an unknown symmetry and faceless
Numbered but anonymous, the donors.


Trembling, the corps, transformed from polity
To agonizing laughter and fear of disclosure:
Undressing before another; malcontent stronger than
The hurried fear of peeling the skin off the donor
In the next room, sunning through open windows
Unmistakably the benevolent, unmistakably dead.


Gentle cuts of a sharpened edge, unremitting against layers
of lives spent, enamoured with self
of lives measured, forgotten by others,
Layers of plans wrought with imagination, now
The fat masking branches and origins from the corps.
The knife cuts deep but fails, the display merely discloses
The grounded limits of the cutter
The founded restlessness of the corps.

Frank Papatheofanis, Ph.D
College of Medicine, '90

---

VITA BREVIS

Did you know butterflies were tenacious.
They do not die easily; they suffer
Captivity more than most creatures
& entertain scarcely a flutter from
Enclosures. Perhaps it is
Their drab full past which prepared them
Excellently—the crude beginning;
one death, an entombment;
Change of a spectacular sort—
And resurrection.
So that—reborn—they treasure
& defend this fragile existence as it is...
And are loath to leave again.

Originally printed in TODAY'S POETS, Chicago Tribune

Doris Vidaver
Assistant Professor
Co-Director of Humanities
Rush University

---

FOOLISH HEART, HAGFISH HEARTS

Foolish heart,
Heed my warning;
You've been hurt before,
Don't be hurt anymore —

— from the song "Foolish Heart"
by Journey

He had chest pressure. Not that bad, really, he told himself; just an aching, burning feeling which went up into his throat. Something he ate. When the pain worsened, he went into the kitchen and told his wife. She could see he was very ill, but he didn't want her to call an ambulance. He will drive, he said. They drove to the hospital and she asked him to pull up by the front door. We will park in the parking lot, he said. He refused a wheelchair and walked to the emergency room, where they told him he was having a massive heart attack. When he recovered, he went home and continued working around the house as usual, fixing the steps, doing cement work, shoveling snow. He continued to smoke two packs of cigarettes a day. It took him only ten weeks to die.

An old surgeon once told me that the human heart is foolish; born upside down (it folds and partly reverses direction in fetal development) it works constantly and eats poorly (two coronary arteries are small and susceptible to the blockage which can cause heart attacks).

Since then I have met many hearts. Hearts with frozen aortic valves which blocked blood flow to the body when the left ventricle contracted; hearts with regurgitant mitral valves which let the blood back up into the left atrium with each beat. Heart muscles weakened by multiple heart attacks, by complete clogging of clumsy arteries more fit to supply rib muscle than the muscle.

Our song-poems speak of our heart's foolishness. We lose it, leave it, break it, have a total eclipse of it, etc., etc. We know we live only because of a single warm, beating heart, which reminds us of itself when we feel our pulse or put our hand on our chest.

Because of the precocity of our heart, the human egg needs little yolk; the cardiovascular system is the first organ system to function in the embryo, bringing nutrients from the mother's placenta and carrying back waste products. At 18 days a group of cells form a pair of long strands called heart cords. These become tubes and fuse to form a single tube. Then the tube dilates, bends to the right and upward, and the ventricles and atria form via delicately orchestrated partitioning of membranes and programmed cell death. Some cells become muscle, others nerve. The nervous system of the human heart is intricate. The development of the cardiovascular system is nearly complete by the end of the seventh week.

If the heart tube bends to the left instead of the right, the heart will end up on the right side of the chest instead of the left. Such a heart often functions normally, despite being both foolish and backwards.

I was angry about our foolish heart until I began studying other hearts. In all creatures, the size of the heart is proportional to body mass, and usually the smaller the heart, the faster the heartbeat: in one minute an elephant heart beats 25 times, the human heart beats 70 times, the shrew heart beats 600 times. one of the most primitive vertebrates, the hagfish, has four types of hearts.

The hagfish is a sea lamprey, an eel-shaped, funnel-mouthed creature which eats live or dead fish. It is still seeking an efficient method of reproduction: while young it is hermaphroditic; when it grows older it is male; in old age, when it grows longer than thirteen inches, it is a female. The huge- yolked eggs of the hagfish are found in lonely clusters of 10-20 on the deep ocean floor, especially around the continental shelf. Hagfish require a soft, salty mud bottom and live in volcano-like mounds.

The circulatory system of the hagfish is a combination of closed and open blood vessels. Its heart system is the most primitive of all vertebrates. It has a regular heart (the brachial heart) and 3 types of accessory hearts; the portal heart which carries blood from intestines to liver; the cardinal hearts, which transport blood from the head to the body, and the caudal hearts, which move blood from the trunk and kidneys to the body.

The caudal hearts are particularly unique; they each have two muscles attached to a stiff piece of cartilage which separates the heart into two chambers. When the muscle on one side flexes the cartilage that way, the chamber on that side fills, and the other side empties, and vice versa. By alternating contractions, the cold, salty hagfish blood is pumped from the tail and kidneys back toward the body cavity. None of the hagfish hearts have any nerve activity; they are isolated muscle.

At first thought it seems a wonderful arrangement. With all these hearts beating in concert, the hagfish needn't worry about the vulnerability of a single heart. There are four types of hearts to do the work. Little hagfish husbands can muck happily about the sea bottom, ignoring a mere single failing heart; old hag wives need never haggle them.

Perhaps our heart transplantation techniques will eventually give us efficient accessory hearts. Until then, we each have one beautiful heart. There is no need to be angry with it; if we but listen it will tell us when it is hurt. Other times, through the nerve connections which increase its rate, it tells us when we are thrilled with deep emotion, when we sense an event of great meaning, when we love. It is not foolish. We dance, it keeps the beat, we can then dance on.

The song-poets lie. The hagfish hearts are cold, primitive, nerveless, sexually ambivalent. The old surgeon speaks only in generalities. Our heart isn't perfect, but it has been singly intent on one purpose, warm and true, since we were embryos.

We apologize, our heart. Keep up the good work. Don't stop now.

David L. Schiedermayer, M.D.
Visiting Scholar and Fellow
The Center for Medical Ethics
Pritzker School of Medicine
University of Chicago
Second Place Prize winner

---

GRIEF

It claws at me while it's inside
I'm afraid to let it out.
Something so monsterously strong
will hurt someone, no doubt.


It sneaks out little by little,
always in different ways.
Blackness and it overcomes me
but I lock it up by day.


It's torturous and makes me cry
as soon as I'm by myself.
I can't be as strong as the others
and shove it on a hidden back shelf.


It's become so overpowering
it obscures my ability to see.
I don't know what to do with
this powerful grief within me.

Bridget LaBanca
Occupational Therapy
College of Associated Health Professions, '88

---

CARRIE LYNN

When first we met, you were very small
Sporting a Barbie doll sized body
Your head no bigger than a racquetball


"Mother," they told me, "your child won't make it"
Heat monitors, NG tubing, brain scans
I wasn't sure you could take it


Everyday there was a new problem
I prayed to the Lord Jesus
"Please help the doctors solve them"


I would stand and watch your still body for hours
"Before you come home Carrie," I'd whisper
"Mommy will paper your room with pink flowers"


With each new operation the warning was the same
"Mother, she may not live through this"
We were pawns in a very cruel game


I knitted you clothes and prayed some more
They told me you had a heart murmur
I cried until my eyes were sore


You gained some weight, so I bought you a bassinet
The medics were skeptical
Bad times were not over with yet


You progressed slowly, but my hopefulness grew
They said you were going to die but,
You knew better and I did too


One by one you fooled them all
Your vitals became stronger
Though your body was still very small


After months of waiting the day finally came
Reluctantly they let me bring you home
Their lack of true faith was a shame


I dressed you in doll clothes and wrapped you up good
After intense instructions we left the hospital
Together at last, like only we knew we would

Cheryll K. Owens
Office of Student Financial Aid

---

AN UNTIMELY DEATH

They took her to the E.R.
on a stretcher
her eyes widened with
a motionless expression
I took her vitals and recorded them on the chart
no respiration, no pulse, no blood pressure
after examining her, I found her to be not alive
her body was dead—everything except her eyes
peering from lifeless sockets
I entered on the chart D.O.A.
I told the attendant to take her to the big M
Where death had visited
all its occupants
Her eyes screamed at me "don't! it's too cold—
life had been that way"
I walked over and closed the eyes
"please those cadavers and I have
nothing in common they died naturally"
The door opened to the morgue and the body was placed and
the door closed again
It was a long, still night
only the sounds of walking humors
and the silence of frigid ex-humans
The next day the white clad men
took the body and proceeded
to routinely work on the "cases"
she was the first
I watched intently as the body parts
were disassembled and examined.
For a brief moment, I thought about
the body shop where I had taken my
car and realized the absurdity of the comparison
Finally, the task was finished
I watched as the doctor recorded on the chart
Cause of death: Unknown
Then he left to go to the Lab
Left alone, I began to recheck the parts
my whole being transfixed on the eyes.
I examined and made my conclusions
and reported on my own findings.

Unfulfilled desires
No Narcissism
Necessitio Attention
Asking for too much
Trying too hard to please
Unloved by others
Reaching for the unreachable
Assuming not enough
Living in the past


Caring, but not cared for
Aimless goals
Unwanted happiness
Suspicious of others' good deeds
Expecting miracles
Searching for questions that needed to be answered

When the doctor returned I showed him my report:
He looked at me with an uninterpretable expression
if this is true, could we have saved her?
I looked at him very sadly
"no sir, we couldn't, but she could have, if she willed to live."

Sharon D. Brown
Office of Student Financial Aid

---

for John Tyler

I.

All babies are born with blue eyes.
Twelve hours old, picture
snapped,already stored
under the white light.
Is that a sugar fairy
over your blue blanket?
Mulatto child, the
white nurses place you
gently underneath the
microscopic eyes of
passerbys.


This should be a letter
to be read at twenty-one.
or thrown away.
An instruction manual
for when you learn to read.


II.

In the South, 1/100
per cent black can
certify you as a nigger:
the drops of blood that turn
menstrual fluid red.
Here in Chicago, your
grandfather asks me if
you're black, though your
mother's skin is paper-white,
her hair straight and light brown.


Your eyes will soon get color.
Pretty soon You'll Bee.
Your mother loves you so much.
Under a microscope,
your mouth toes fingers
a little hair
astound.

Ann Stotts
Graduate student, English
Honorable Mention

---

sestina

I pick flowers
here and then you
are the empty
spot beside red
tulips. My flesh
rejects this pain.


This kind of pain
brought no flowers.
Torn from my flesh,
no cry from you.
But yet so red
the blood. Empty


womb on empty
table and pain,
a sterile red,
is what flowers.
I would see you,
clung to his flesh,


and ardent flesh
sang the empty
future of you.
I saw the pain
alone. Flowers
of purest red


are cut. My red
indignant flesh
received flowers.
I see empty
fields of pain.
Even here you


are not far. You
could still send red-
fresh stabs of pain.
one flash. My flesh
will stay empty
of new flowers.


Lacking flesh, you
stay empty pain,
still red flowers.

Ann Stotts
Graduate student, English

---

SUICIDE

and did they ask about me,
did their cashmere
hearts politely inquire,
did their mouths gape and
or drop in their
Taj Mahal of the
cafeteria?
and did Jill, with her
white swinging elegance
cutting me awkward months
and months, did she,
was her stride affected,
and did I fidget and
gulp into my tuna
sandwich of the sky?

Ann Stotts
Graduate student, Engish

---

UNTITLED

"Hello, come and have a seat."
"Thanks."
"Let me take a minute and look over your charts...

Evanston Hospital Neurologic wing examining office door opens.

"Ah, Mark, here you are, have a seat. This is Mark Morgan, a fourth-year medical student at Northwestern University—we have a little program for the students, and Mark is interested in neurology. He'll be sitting in on our yearly visit, and watching the exam.... "

Great. I thought that the seventy-five dollar fee sort of guaranteed you a private 'limited neurologic consultation.' My doctor. My consultant.

" ... Mark, this patient has a seizure disorder, and she is controlled on 300mg Dilantin daily. I'll let you come over and take a look at the records."

"Great!"

Can you hear the paper shuffling?

"Now, you haven't had any problems in the last year—good—but your Dilantin level was low. I'm going to bump you up to another pill."

"No, I just had finals. I do this every semester—it runs low."

"Now, I don't think.... "
"Believe me—I'll get another level next week."

He looks mad, but drops the subject. Do you want to know what he looks like? Imagine people from high school who you can't remember very well because they tended to wear neutral colors, and you'll get a general idea.

"All right—I don't think we should take chances, but ... well, if it's low again, you'll go right up to 400mg/day."

HHHH—yeah.

"Now, let me look at your teeth—Mark, watch, I'm checking the gingiva for any possible abnormal growth— this patient tends not to have problems, oh! healthy gums, good, but it's always best to check. Now, please, and we'll have you walk—good—okay, start here and walk to the sink— now up on tiptoes... good, good—okay, close your eyes and walk a straight line. Nice. Now, come over to the examining table, that's right, sit up there—Mark, could you turn off the lights—okay, look straight across the room — no, no, don't follow my light, focus on the corner of the room. Good! Now, same thing, other side. Good. Looks okay. Close your eyes and touch your finger to your nose—right—keep the eyes closed, touch the other finger. Hhm. You have a slight tremor in your hands."

I know what it is, but I'm not telling.

"Have you been under stress?"
"Yeah — finals,"
"Oh, all right."

Yeah, but you don't know about all the coffee I drank — coffee that you told me not to drink, but I do, and you don't know about the beer, the Big No. I'm not telling, because you decided last year that Dilantin was going to go, because I'm such a model controlled patient. I think you'd be upset at my disobedience of the orders.

He's talking again. Let's listen.

"Fine. We'll see you in about three months, and I think that that would be a good time to see about coming off the medication. Mark, thank you for joining us. Do you have any questions?"

No, Mark? But I do. I find my nerve, and bring up a subject from two visits past.

"Um, can I go on the Pill?"

Oopsy.

Silence.

They're embarrassed, these two medical fraternity brothers. Goddamn it, it took me long enough to blurt out the initial request when I was twenty years old, to him, my straitlaced doctor. I'm furious about the med student. He is my peer, and I must ask for birth control, from my doctor, from my private physician, in his presence.

Well, while I am thinking, they have been talking, discussing relative merits and drawbacks. Mark Morgan has worked in a comment about his girlfriend'B contraception practices. I'm sorry I brought up the subject.

"I see no reason why not. Have your gynecologist give me a call, and we'll go from there. of course, if you choose to take it

watch out be careful... notify if ... plans to stop meds are off Right then, see you soon

I can't believe it. I finally can.

Epilogue: Reader, the patient, being fully ready to take the birth control pill, and being suitably enthused, got stung by a yellow-jacket. So? So, she had an allergic reaction, and went into seizures. While the patient's medical status is vastly improved, her hopes for Lo-Ovral are forever shattered.

Heloise Moran
Graduate Student, English

---

E.R.   4 AM

The cops bring us doughnuts, fresh
from the bakery. They sit with us in the lounge
and tell war stories from the streets.
Sal, the grinning Italian, puts his arm
around the nurses, like all cops,
he is heavy, a paunch overriding his belt.
We Bit, doctors, cops, nurses,
munching doughnuts with coffee,
hiding from the humanity we serve.
Feeling their presence out in the street,
the hospital beds, the bars, the jails . . .


They're out there—
Drunks who will fall
and need stitches.
The runaway will run before a car
and need x-rays, will be difficult, leave
against medical advice.
The out-of-towners will be robbed,
struck with a hammer to the head.
Welcome to Chicago.
The neighborhood gypsy's foot will not "feel right."
At 5 am, she'll come in.
The wino the cops will find left out on the street
a gash over his eye, blood everywhere,
soaking his clothes, dripping bright red
on our white tile.


They're out there, miseries waiting to happen.
A broken world, angry, and wanting repair.
The unreal city is all too real,
lost in its darkness, no dawn in sight.


Leave us for now
so we can sit and chew our doughnuts.


Because we hurt, too.

Bonnie Salomon
College of Medicine, '87

---

ARROGANCE

So for three days he
had not been guilty of a
single gross error while
the continued stream of
feet came in over the
blurred pattern of the
rug . . .
- Max Brand,
The Secret of Dr. Kildare

He had the kind of sick, sensitive heart prone to side effects from the medicine digoxin. He also had severe congestive heart failure which can be treated with digoxin. He was in terrible shape. He was on the respirator to help oxygenate his emphysematous, fluid- congested lungs.

I remember it clearly. I had debated for an hour about giving the drug, and called a cardiologist to consult. His answer came slowly: give the digoxin, it has risks, it has risks. But not giving the digoxin has risks too, he said.

I ordered the medication. A half-hour after it was given, the patient's heart rate slowed dangerously. I ordered other drugs, started opening the pacemaker package, and called the cardiologist. By the time he arrived we were attempting to resuscitate the patient; an emergency pacemaker didn't capture the heart, couldn't stir it back to beating again.

We looked at each other, our hands still touching his dead body, and knew we had made a mistake. The drug had killed him. The opposite of what we had intended happened: instead of prolonging his life it had shortened it.

I do not tell this story easily. I would prefer to think I never make mistakes. I would like to think my judgment is always appropriate, my memory always sharp, my information always complete. I would wish never to have harmed any patient, never to have written an order which caused a hurt. I wish he could have sat up, pulled out his respirator tube, and said, I'm okay, doc. I'm not dead. I was just testing you to see if you would use digoxin on me. You can see it would be a mistake; it works for other people, but it just doesn't work for me. Now let's try it over, but this time without digoxin.

He had no such words. They bagged him up and took him away. Now begins the struggle in the doctor's mind. Was it really a mistake? After all, such drugs always have side effects. Surely side effects are not mistakes? And what if I hadn't given digoxin? Who knows how long his failing heart would have survived? Isn't it possible that not giving the drug would have been a mistake also?

Whenever I get in this struggle I imagine I am the patient. It is a lesson I have learned from many good doctors. It cuts right through the web of rationalization. You imagine yourself dead and think: no human being has the right to do this to me. It is a mistake not forgivable, a mistake not recompensable.

I am not a car, to be repaired by a doctor- mechanic. I am not a product, to be treated as expendable depending on the effort and cost-benefit. I am a human being, a unique life, not comparable to any other. And I am now bagged and twisted because of a small syringe of medicine my doctor ordered thinking it would help.

After I finish imagining I am the patient, I am guilty and despairing beyond measure. It seems there is no forgiveness for me among men, for I have done, scientifically and using sterile technique, that which no human has a right to do to another. It is taboo and I have done it in peace and in broad daylight. My intentions are not on trial. It is the power and ability to kill and maim which is the problem.

The struggle continues in the doctor's mind. Can I not learn by mistakes like the rest of humanity? Why must my mistakes be so costly? only the arrogant think they never make mistakes, and they are mistaken. Dr. Kildare could only go three days without a gross error: how did he do in a lifetime of patients, after the rug wore out from the thousands upon thousands of feet?

I have no answer. I know no other way to look at it, besides the patient's part and the doctor's part. I am not talking here about negligence or malpractice; I am talking about mistakes. I am wondering about the arrogance which insists no mistakes are to be made, the arrogance of both patient and doctor.

I am sorry I used digoxin on him. I hope never to make a mistake again. I memorized, as did my intelligent, obsessive-compulsive peers, the human body, its anatomy, chemistry, physiology, pathology. I stayed up night after night, seeking the clinical pearls which would keep me from making mistakes, but I have worked more than my three days in the clinic.

And always, the bag, twisted tightly, burying my mistakes, keeping me poised between being the doctor and patient, helpful and guilty, alive and dead, arrogant and penitent.

David L. Schiedermayer, M.D.
Visiting Scholar and Fellow
The Center for Medical Ethics
Pritzker School of Medicine
University of Chicago

---

CUTTING LIFE NOT DEATH

My hands await the touch of icy metal
whirring noises I am incoherent to.


My fingers grasp a needle and thread
And stitch through living tissue
as if it were a sampler.


My fingers are bloodied
And my reward is a smile.

Justine Gasior
College of Denistry, '89

---

A LEPER

Colonies, all around and within,


A wasting figure, once restless, now


Tamed by fear and a stench;


Too many have probed, few have touched


The pain, loss of feeling, sensation,


Unbridled guilt, unfastened flesh.


Father Damien went to Molokai,


The empty, darkened halls have forgotten


Those of the Pacific, the ones shipped to Louisiana


But the neurons, that rended the present communication,


Those neurons, have been forgotten, too.


Dum spectant oculi laesos, laeduntur et ipsi


multaque corporibus transitions nocent.^*

^*"When their eyes behold others in pain, they feel pain themselves, and so many ills pass from body to body."
— Ovid, De Remedio Amoris, 615.

Frank Papatheofanis, Ph.D.
College of Medicine, '90

---

PHYSICIAN NOVECENTO

Night gives channeled trees on rivulets of human paths,
Scattered stations of supplicators
seeking an untold science.
My hand has touched pain from a believer.
I will bear a new child searching for an old earth.
But I am not a benefactor.
I arrive suddenly like a tracker
to share a momentary gift.
My craft is only the elementary gesture.


Night again has measured my passage,
But has let the morning mist come again
like the breath of a child
a silent gift.

Alfred Teoli, M.F.A.
Biocommunications Arts
College of Associated Health Professions

---

DEAD YET ALIVE

There are those who have fear,
Where fear fails to exist.
With delusions held dear,
Their minds a cloudy mist.
Hiding from existence,
Fleeing what's in their head;
Living in the distance,
They are alive yet dead.


others have life cut short.
Their end came all too soon.
The reaper called report;
Trumpets played a tune.
Loved ones have memories.
The spirits soar and thrive.
Recounting their stories,
They are dead yet alive.

Howard B. Chodash
College of Medicine, '88

---

THE LONG, LONG ROAD

Forgive me if I've forgotten


life when youth was on


MY side of the fence
and time was trivial.


And now that life has


shown me the reverse of


its sparkle,


I can only wish, that
my journey, has inlaid
marks, along the path.

Denise Thompson
Occupational Therapy
College of Associated Health Professions, '88

---

DEMENTIA

First, words are lost
like misplaced keys in cluttered cabinets


Thoughts, images held together by worn threads
stretch
down
deep
crevasses filled with unfamiliar faces
of past loved ones
mother, daughter, wife?


Cat scans outline darkness where dreams once lived
leave little place for hope


Soon, threads will snap
sending them colliding,
images flying


So they look like abstract art
Sometimes beautiful but not understood by most.

Daniel J. Brauner, M.D.
Geriatrics, General Internal Medicine
College of Medicine
Third Place Prize Winner

---

TABULA RASA

"The structure of the venous plexus in the nose is similar to the structure of the venous plexus in the penis, however the function differs."
—Lecture on the histology of the nasal cavity
"Unless you are Pinnochio,"
Someone behind me softly quipped.
And while back into sleep she slipped,
I laughed rather quietly so


I would not disturb my colleagues,
Who were also in the throes of
Too many facts and not enough
Sleep. In class we catch up on "Zlis.


Whiling away for a while, I try
To recall the last year I changed
More than the board has rearranged
As the past ten minutes dragged by.


Lights dim. The movie "Parallax
View" springs to mind, and I chuckle.
Slides flash. The darkness takes its toll.
Eyes slowly close. Muscles relax.


Wandering minds confront a crunch
of facts taken from the gestalt
That is medical knowledge. I halt
My mind. Time to go grab some lunch.

Jon M. Flacker
Pritzker School of Medicine
University of Chicago, '90

---

POETRY IN MICROBIOLOGY

                 Shining the familiar metallic sheen 
                Hues combining, blue blending with green 
                Memories of urinary tract infections 
                            many hardly relish 
                In a MacConkey's Agar plate 
                            pinkishly they flourish 
               on an API strip 
                           the famous code numbers: 5144552 
              Bearing in mind 
                          citrate and malonate do not turn blue 
             Reactions of indole and methyl red positive 
                          brightly appear 
             Escherichiae coli, no tinge of doubt 
                          The-identification is clear. 

                     Another charmer swarms in site 
                    The familiar odor emitted, with all might 
                   Candidly accepted as normal flora of the stool 
                  Yet in urine, they are nobody's fool 
                 Fumes of rage 
                           so difficult to hide 
                Leading to black precipitates 
                           of hydrogen sulfide 
               Deamination of phenylpyruvic acid is another key 
              The swarming beauty? 
             None other than Tribe Proteae 

                 I could go on making poetry 
                  on my favorite subject Enterobacteriaceae 
                  Yet, poetry is not on my list 
                 Call me a desperate Medical Technologist 
                Hoping to convince people: 
                 Microbiology is not only for the smart 
                But for people who like poetry.... 
                 Microbiology is an art. 

Teresa Tam
Medical Laboratory Sciences
College of the Associated Health Professions, '87

---

FAST FRIENDS

This poem was written during the period before senior comps and before the match lists were due. I came to realize how much the guys that I studied with really meant. In many ways they've been my support network through these four years and I'll miss them terribly next year.
You've listened when I've asked you
And sometimes, when I haven't.
You seem to know when
I need listening to.


In listening...
My problems seem diminished
My joys, they've been increased,
My anxieties, quieted.


And when things weren't going well
And I felt self-defeated,
You've given me perspective
And urged me to push on.


I've felt quite secure knowing
You've held a faith in me
That I wasn't sure of in myself.


I've always seemed the taker
Of your warmth and understanding.
I wish I could support you
As you've always done for me.


Two people from very different worlds,
Yet Fast Friends,
Maybe more the same than different
Because of having been here
And having shared all of this.

Mary Vanko
College of Medicine, '87

---

SIR DOCTOR

Hey you in the white coat
You're not so hot!
How dare you plan invincible and blessed!
You take life into your hands
and make a patchwork of blood and sweat


How dare you declare yourself a perfect person!
Don't place yourself aloof and above your
patient beholders.


If God wanted to, He would strike your shield
and take away your coat of arms.

Feiruz Shehadi
Admissions and Records Officer
College of Architecture, Art and Urban Planning

---

REPRODUCTION

A simple act of acrobatics for future audiences
Two players fitting well in their parts
to produce a creative show of
pleasure and progeny.

Feiruz Shehadi
Admissions and Records Officer
College of Architecture, Art and Urban Planning

---

ONLY THE BODY REMAINS...

              The soul of commonplace 
                    pierces the air of hopes of yesterday 
             it weaves in my heart 
                    daring me to bring back a little sanity 
             to the world of darkness 
                    Fear has no name here for I am the 
             master of a Knowledge that only I can earn 
                    I will submit 
               and expertly analyze the situation 
             Stand tall, the footmen are waiting for the news 
                    Death has gone 
                        The master of darkness is I 
             The secrets of Life are here in my possession 
                    I will learn as others have 
               but inside I shake 
             as you in your eternal peace lie there 
                    holding the key of life 
             and I struggle to understand what your Life 
               must have been 
             The world must have been so Grand 
             life so precious, and I am but One 
                    to awe in the mystery of Life and Death 
                    at my fingertips 
             I wish I could have known you 
               for the curiosity of Wisdom is a facet of 
                 my education that you have indulged 
             Teachers of Life, 
                 Hold precious your gift 
             for the Children of Tomorrow 

Mildred Pazmino
College of Medicine, '90

---

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This third edition of Body Electric continues the magazine's presence at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The first edition, published in 1985, was an attempt to bring a creative-yet nonscientific-voice to the health professions. Contributions to Body Electric deal with the general theme of medicine and education in the health professions. The top three entries are awarded prize money. Contributors now include not only students from the schools and colleges of the University of Illinois at Chicago but also faculty and staff, as well as students and faculty from neighboring medical schools.

Body Electric is a truly collaborative work, but certain individuals deserve special mention. First and foremost, Suzanne Poirier, PhD, is to be thanked for her invaluable support and guidance. Thanks also to Hyman Muslin, MD, of the Department of Psychiatry, for final judging of entries, and Avalon Collier for her clerical work. Finally, the Humanistic Studies Program and lnterprofessional Education Committee have provided the financial support necessary to continue our publication.

Bonnie Salomon

Editor:	BONNIE SALOMON College of Medicine '87
Advisor:	SUZANNE POIRIER, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Literature and Health Care
Design:	BILL MAYER Office of Publications Services