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Emergency

They sure named it right when they called it "residency." The other doctors were dealing with a messy bus accident, so ER had been my baby since lunchtime, and it was past supper—way past.
I had gotten the waiting room cleared out, was adding a few notes to the charts and hoping to sit down sometime before midnight. But no. In came this couple with a little girl. She'd been running a fever all day; fallen down the stairs, they said.
The last thing I felt like dealing with was a sick kid. Couldn't it have been a nice, easy chest cold in some cooperative adult? But, no, it had to be this tough little seven-year-old who, with clenched teeth and clenched fists just lay on the table despising me.
I tried to take her vital signs and she pushed the stethoscope away. I tried to check her reflexes and she constricted every muscle in her body. I didn't feel much like being Mr. Charm myself, and I guess you could say I was a little more abrupt, a little less gentle than I should have been.
I bent over her and put my hands on her neck to check for swollen glands. The kid let out a scream that stopped the whole ER cold—and we've heard some screams before. I pulled back, showed her the palms of my hands to let her know I wasn't going to hurt her, but she kept right on screaming.
Her parents were on her in a flash, insisting she be quiet, insisting she behave. The mother seemed to be pleading, but the father was threatening. He grabbed the child's shoulders and began shaking her. The little girl screamed even louder. She was in a frenzy now, trying to push the father off of her, kicking, punching, all the while keeping up that terrifying scream.
I moved in to get the father off but not before one of the girl's kicks landed in his ribs. He immediately punched her hard in the face, the force of it practically knocking her off the table. The force of it stunned me too for a minute. Before I could even react, the little girl became hysterical.
"No, no, Papa!" she screamed. "No, don't do that! Don't hurt me! Don't hurt me! No!"
The mother threw herself in front of the child. THere was a look of terror—no, more than terror—horror and terror mixed together on the mother's face. "Don't,' she begged her husband. "She didn't mean it. She'll be good now. Pleassse!"
I looked at the mother's face and then at the girl's. And then I looked at the father's face and I wanted to kill that son-of-a-bitch. I mean, I could have killed him with my own two hands right there on the spot.
"Get out," I said to the father. He turned around and gaped at me as if he couldn't grasp that I was talking to him like that. "I need to examine my patient ... alone."
I was challenged immediately. "For only a fever?" he demanded.
"For whatever I need to examine her for," I answered as calmly as I could. Keep cool, pal, I told myself. Don't lay a hand on him. Just get him out of here.
For a minute we stood staring at each other, and I wondered what I was going to do if he refused to go. Whatever he was wondering too must have changed his mind about forcing the issue any more because he abruptly grabbed his wife's arm and pulled her-out of the room with him.
A couple of nurses were waiting at the door and came in as soon as the parents went out. They started comforting the little gi'rl, and within a few minutes she had calmed down. Then they told her what a nice doctor I was, how I only wanted to help her, the kind of stuff you tell a kid. But she was a tough little cookie and she eyed me up for a minute while I just stood there letting her pass judgment on me. I felt like I had really made it when she actually agreed to let me examine her.
By the time I was done, I don't know who was more upset, the nurses or me. We were none of us very old or experienced, and we all took what we found pretty hard.
"Where are you going, Doctor?" one of them asked me as I headed for the door.
"You know damned well where I'm going."
"You'll probably have to testify in court," the other one said.
"So I'll testify," I said, and I headed for the telephone to call the cops.

Sharon Sassone
University of Illinois at Chicago
Department of Communications and Theatre
Honors College, 1990

---

Body Fuel

If you weren't jotting this all down with your slim ballpoint pen in the bulging manila folder, I might tell you my first response to your question. "Trace your daughter's disorder, if you can," you said, "back to a specific incident."
I can, but I don't let on. As you watch me, I notice that you glance reflexively, I suppose, at my midriff, which is revealed by my open coat. A forty-five year-old woman with a beer belly-like paunch. Does this seem especially ironic to you? Maybe you should include this in your notes.
It's true that my polyester pants rebel against me now. My wardrobe doesn't forgive the recent double and triple helpings of my own cooking.
Inside, I'm trying to trace it all back to a single incident, which seems to have been frozen in my memory. The heat in this office is enveloping me. I am beginning to perspire, so I must take off my coat.
As you watch me squirm with my worn, but well-padded coat, your face is impassive and when I meet your gaze, you bend back over your notes. Your blankness is comforting, though. It is much less engraved and accusing than Laurals concerned look.
I hope that you will be patient with me. You are Laurals doctor, so you must be well-used to long pauses.
"Mrs. Adams, I realize that this is not easy. Your information is vital, though, to our helping your daughter."
Your voice has suddenly become softer. My face must be betraying me. "Now, please try to think back and remember the first time you noticed a change in Laurals food-related behavior."
Is this one of the psychological terms in your notes? It sounds like a euphemism for grocery shopping. Do you mean the Safeway where Laura and I always shopped, only two blocks away from our apartment?
You have stopped scribbling and are staring at me. "I just need a little time to think," I say, staring down at my lap.
It was late afternoon, and Laura and I were at Safeway, a short time after Jim finally moved out. Recipe reduction was our main goal in those initial days and weeks.
"Take your time, Mrs. Adams. If you relax, you'll probably be able to remember much more." Again you bend over your notes. If I told you what I was thinking about—where I really was—would you feel foolish writing down something like, "Scene of Key Incident: Safeway"? Still, you scribble more notes, even though I am silent.
Laura and I were in the frozen foods section. We parked our cart in front of the freezer and faced each other. The cool vapor of the silver-colored freezer rose up from behind us as we figured out that night's dinner.
Our critical question was whether or not I should buy a frozen chicken pot pie for Laura, and a Weight Watcher's dinner for me. I had my New Image to keep in mind. The pot pies in question were Swanson's, the kind with the peas and diced carrots in them. They were Laurals favorite.
Jim never liked them, though. "Goddamn impersonal, these prepared foods,' held say, tearing through the golden crust with his serrated steak knife. 'They've even got ready-made slits in the crusts."
"Mrs. Adams, please don't feel that I'm rushing you, but let me help you out here."
You speak, but I am still looking down into the freezer, at the brightly colored boxes blurred by a layer of frost.
"Now if you can't pinpoint a specific action of Laurals, try to think of something she may have said that alerted you to her problem."
Alerted? I imagine the smoke detector In our dining room. Sometimes when I am sitting at the table alone after a meal, I stare up at it until I see the read light blink.
"Well," I say slowly, half-glancing at the office ceiling, "Laura didn't really give out any signals that anything was wrong." (There, I think. You must like my use of the word "signals." Be sure to include it in your notes.) "Laura was generally so quiet," I say, wishing I could find a smoke detector in the office, to watch for the red light. "But if you give me a minute, I'm sure I'll remember something more specific."
"Take your time." Again you scribble, marking down your observations.
At the freezer, Laura refused to buy separate meals for our dinner.
"Mom, it just doesn't make sense to eat different food at dinner. There's only two of us eating, you know." She shook the moist, cool box in her hand. "Face it, Mom. One pie can't hurt you."
That's easy for you to say, I was about to tell her, glancing at her svelte body. No middle-aged man—no man for that matter—had ever accused her of "letting herself go to pot."
But Laura already knew that, I reminded myself. She knew it well from our late nights at the kitchen table, those one-sided talks—I ranted, she absorbed, and the circles under her eyes growing darker and deeper.
The heavy woman walked, or rather trudged by Laura and me and stopped in front of the freezer behind us. I tried to look away, but I couldn't help resting my gaze on her for a brief, but overwhelming glance. She was immensely obese, her hair hung limply and her clothes were drab and tent—like.
When she leaned over the freezer, Laura tossed the chicken pot pie box into the basket and swirled around to gaze at the woman. I wanted to reach to reach out to Laura, and squeeze her shoulder—or something.
Instead, I watched my daughter watch this woman. I stared at the back of Laurals slightly angular, but also pleasantly curved body, and wondered how I could have contributed to its creation.
As we watched, the woman slowly bent farther over the freezer, her stomach Insulating her from the cool, metal rim, and reached down. I saw Laurals shoulders stiffen and raise up slightly—her old, anxious habit.
Slowly the woman straightened up and I saw the box that she clutched in her bloated hand was a Dressel's whipped cream cake, with decorative writing and swirls on the top of it. It was the kind that I used to buy for Laura's birthday parties when she was small. Why didn't I make homemade cakes for her? Or at least, order one from Julianne's bakery?
As the woman trudged off, Laura turned around and faced me. I suddenly wanted her to do or say something ironic, even heartless. Some smart-alecky comment that you'd expect from a seventeen-year-old ...
Laura didn't roll her eyes or giggle. Instead, she stared at me with her desperate green eyes, slowly panning the length of my body as though she were a TV camera. Finally she settled her gaze on my midriff, and said, "Food will only make it worse, won't it?"
"Mrs. Adams? We can come back to this question, you know. Maybe we could meet another time." You are alarmed, I suppose, by my shivering. It is not, though, like Laurals shivering, her perpetual chills. Extinction of body heat—this is the technical reason her fragile arms and legs are covered with a soft layer of hair, of protective fur.
See? I read the literature prescribed for the parents. The pamphlets usually begin with a pert analogy like, "The body is like an engine which needs constant refueling to function properly... I
"Now, Mrs. Adams, maybe you should come back another time for a conference. When should we reschedule this?"
I realize that I need to get this over with, as soon as possible. "No, I was just thinking it all over, so now I'm ready to tell you." I am still shivering so I pull my coat up around my shoulders.
You look concerned, but you needn't bother. I will try to provide you with logical details, with the expected case history.
"It started with the bathroom scale," I say quickly. "Laura took it out of the hall closet and moved it into the bathroom, right next to the toilet. It was really in the way, but she wouldn't let me move it."
I cannot stop myself. "And after every meal, she'd run up to her bathroom to—to weigh herself, I suppose." There—a concrete detail which you can jot down in your notes.
"Continue, please," you say, your head still bent down over the folder as you write.
"Then, the running began. First, she joined the track team at school. then she added her own workouts. She'd get up early to run before breakfast, then she'd run again after she'd return home at night. It was dark then and I didn't want to let her—I was concerned about her safety—but she was insistent, fierce." I am almost out of breath.
"Mrs. Adams, what you've told me is fine—all quite helpful—but you haven't mentioned her actual eating behavior." Again, your expression is empty.
Food, what does food have to do with it, I ask myself. "Food, yes, well she didn't cut it out entirely, like most of the girls in the books and pamphlets—" I glance up at you to see if you if you have registered my allusion to research, but you are still blank. "But with Laura, I noticed it when she began picking at it; only eating specific parts of certain foods."
"Specific parts? Can you explain this?"
I reach down and finger the cool, metal zipper of my winter coat. Looking up, I say slowly, 'Yes, well, let's see. We used to bake chocolate chip cookies together, but instead of eating the whole cookie afterwards, she'd just pick out the chocolate chips and eat those." I can hear her now, saying to me, "It's easier to digest these rich foods In little bits, Mom."
"Any other foods?"
"Yes, one more that I recall.m I am not sure why I said this. Maybe Jim is right that I feel guilty. At least, that's what he told me on the phone the other night.
"It should be guilt, Margie, after all that junk you've been shoveling into her for years. It's no wonder she finally rebelled,' he said, before I hung up and turned on the TV.
"Well, there were the chicken pot pies,' I say quietly.
I pause, so you prod me. "The chicken pot pies?"
"Yes, Swanson's, the type you buy frozen and heat up at home—" I am envisioning my oven at home, the dark walls aglow with preheated warmth as I open it to slide in a pale, chilled-through pie.
"And how were these significant to Laur-a's behavior?"
They weren't in the slightest, I think, it was their warmth — when you stuck your fork through the crust, the inside was warm and full.
I can almost feel the vapors rising up onto my face.
"Mrs. Adams?"
"It was the peas and carrots, they—no, she—would pick them out with her fork and eat them. She'd leave the crust and chicken, and all of the rest in the tin, on her plate ... And then she'd bolt from the table to go up and weigh herself, and—" Instead of racing after her, I'd reach over to her plate with my fork and begin shoveling her meal into my mouth.
"Mrs. Adams, at any time did you confront Laura with her unusual behavior, with her problem?"
I am shivering again. The warm vapors have suddenly vanished, like Laura, from the dinner table. As you stare silently at me, I squirm my way back into my thick coat.
"Well, perhaps we could fill in some more information at another time." you say, shutting the bulging folder and setting down your pen. "We will keep you posted, of course, on Laurals progress reports."
As I rise to leave, I reach around to zip up my coat and feel its padding rub against my shaking arms.
Walking down the dim hallway, a nurse passes by me, pushing a woman and her newborn in a wheelchair. The mother is wearing a winter coat and her- baby is wrapped in blankets. Where is the father, I wonder, as I walk behind them. Is he waiting outside with the car?
Now I am riding in the wheelchair. Jim walks beside us, carrying my suitcase in one hand and cupping his other hand dnxiOUSIY around the base of my neck. ID My arms is LdUr-a, a round bundle. She is swaddled in thick blankets to protect her' against the cold, but secretly I suspect that they are unnecessary—the heat from Jim's hand tr-avels down my neck and into my arms.

Carolyn Alessio
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Department of Rhetoric, 1989
First Place Winner

---

Reflections

Where darkness had been,
now a beam of white light.
A picture turned sideways,
old doorknobs shine bright.
She cannot accuse them,
she only asks why.


That car with its lights on,
a young woman inside—
It was no coincidence
that each day her own husband
drank coffee and looked at this woman.


She noticed the heating vent,
the two sparkling jars,
then a broken church window.
She knew these had meaning,
she knew they had done it,
but what she asks is so little,
she only asks why.


The hearse for her father,
the death of a brother—
these dreams must surely have meaning.
The virgin had blessed her
with signs made of light,
with a message beamed to her daily:
The purpose of a hard life,
and the point to its suffering.


She had never complained,
never took for herself,
always a smile for family and friends.
She had been such a good wife.
and so kind to her children.


After years of denial her spirit rebels.
Now it fashions a face in the mirror.
It makes the lips move, and
she peers into warped glass,
struggling to recognize
her long hidden self.

James Black
University of Illinois
College of Medicine-Urbana
Medical Scholars Program

---

A Little After Martha's Suicide

The words cross the page like a zipper ripping open.
My side splits from the first rib to my gut.
I see nothing among the trees.
The grass is brown in drought.
I call out to all the echoes of the world. Martha, can you hear me?
Silence meets my searching eyes.
Blood seeps through the cracks in the clay. It must have.
I smell the baking cake burn.
Shave the bottom and resurrect it. Please.

Dipali V. Apte
University of Illinois
College of Medicine-Urbana
Medical Scholars Program

---

A Manic Depressive

There is a cloud formation in this mind
Dark and dismal blocking out the sun
And all light has been flung into shadow
The blue horizon has taken on shades of gray
and now all clarity has become fused.


In the eye of the storm there is a calm,
But a whirlwind is at hand
Destruction the next call


And afterwards the silence.

Feiruz Shehadi
Admissions and Records Officer III
University of Illinois at Chicago
College of Art, Architecture, and Urban Planning

---

A woman with Alzheimer's disease
was shot several times by her husband.

Only He Knows

Only he knows
What went through his mind
Each day he sat by her side


What happened to him as he watched her suffer
She'd been taken away, her mind destroyed


Not one shot, but many
Came from his heart, not his hand


He had to help her sleep

Mary Bliesmer, R.N., M.P.H.
Mankato State University
School of Nursing

---

Mr. C

Mr. C was losing ground.
He had been diagnosed for five months.
His prognosis was poor.
He wouldn't live much longer.


His appetite was non-existent.
The dietician ordered supplements.
His wife brought special foods from home.
Nothing worked. He lost weight.


A feeding tube was inserted.
Mr. C didn't refuse, but he looked confused.
I chatted as the feeding flowed in.
He looked at me with an ache in his eyes.


I tried to get him to be open about his feelings.
He wouldn't express his wishes.
His wife insisted he was improving.
The feedings continued. The ache remained.

Mary L. Anthony, R.N., M.S.N.
MacMurry College
School of Nursing

---

A Special Relationship

He leaned over and whispered in her ear,
"I love you, and I'm right here."
They had been married over forty years.
She had been in a nursing home the past eight.


He told us she had gradually become incapacitated.
Her medical diagnosis was "senile dementia."
She was currently hospitalized
For a severe infection.


He visited her each day.
Some times only briefly.
"I think she knows I'm here," he said.
"I want her to know I care."


It was so touching to watch him with her.
He was so gentle and kind.
Softly held stroke her face
Or place a curl behind her ear.


"Yes, I think she knows I'm here.
I want her to know I haven't forgotten her.
She's been part of my life for so long.
How will I ever let her go?"


Daily he visited.
He whispered endearments.
He touched her lovingly "Yes, she knows I'm here."

Mary L. Anthony, R.N., M.S.N.
MacMurry College
School of Nursing

---

The Physician in Literature: The Plaque and Dr. Rieux

The fictional physician has been the carrier of many messages: he has been the oracle of events, dire and serene; he has been the voice of enlightened perspective; he has been the model for agape. In Camus' The Plague, Dr. Bernard Rieux emerges as the carrier of messages to the inhabitants of his city, Oran, and to us, the Spectators. His function and messages are several: to lead us out of chaos, to warn of pitfalls in living, to remind of what life can and cannot provide, to be a model for the less-gifted, and to offer succor in times of distress. Thus Camus' physician is variously an instructor in living, a psychotherapist to those hiding against life, and a myth-breaker in curing the distortions in living.
From the very beginning of the novel it is clear that realism is of little importance for the story. Although Camus uses the actual city of Oran, on the Mediterranean coast of Algeria, as the setting for his novel, the characters are clearly meant to portray types of people rather than realistic human beings. Descriptive details are sparse. Rather, characters are portrayed by their actions, beliefs and values. For example, the central character of Dr. Rieux Is described early on as "a man who was sick and tired of the world he lived in—though he had much liking for his fellow men—." The townspeople are described collectively as bored and interested in little else other than doing business and making money. Even the town is nondescript, characterized by its "banality," "a thoroughly negative place."
We are thus alerted from the outset that this is to be a morality tale. The events provide a setting and a problem to which the actors must respond in the context of their values.
The first real event of the story is quite startling. Upon leaving his office one morning, Dr. Rieux steps on a dead rat. In the succeeding days, he discovers more dead and dying rats as he makes his way through the city; and then people begin to die. They die horrible deaths with high fevers and swollen nodes. bursting with pus and blood. Gradually Dr. Rieux realizes that the city of Oran has been infested with the plague.
As the contagion spreads and the deaths increase, the town's medical authorities and bureaucrats argue whether or not the infestation can be considered an 'epidemic' and whether or not it is really 'the plague." Dr. Rieux is frustrated with this bureaucratic nominalism, taking the position that no matter what it is called, the disease will spread unnecessarily if no action is taken. Part One ends abruptly as the city authorities finally become alarmed enough to proclaim a state of plague and quarantine the city.
The second section of the book is concerned with the reaction of the populace and of specific characters to the isolation and separation from the rest of the world created by the epidemic. 'Thus the first thing the plague brought to our town was exile." Camus writes beautifully of the psychological and moral dilemmas faced by people in a state of uncertainty and helplessness, no matter what the cause. "Thus, too, they came to know the incorrigible sorrow of all prisoners and exiles, which is to live in company with a memory that serves no purpose."
One response to the plague is the organization of a Week of Prayer, culminating in Father Paneloux's sermon proclaiming the plague a judgment of God for the sins of the people of Oran. Another response was the formulation of unofficial, voluntary sanitary groups by the character Tarrou, a resistance movement, so to speak, to fight the plague. Some try to flee the city, others go mad or become criminal, and a few struggle to retain a sense of autonomy and free choice in the face of a force which treats all people alike. "No longer were there individual destinies; only a collective destiny, made of plague and the emotions shared by all."
The remaining sections of the book go on to describe the extremes of behavior and anguish drising as d consequence of the unrelenting sameness, boredom and helplessness of a people held hostage to the plague.
In extreme situations, all familiar and reliable ways of behaving are disrupted. Self-esteem is threatened, and the very integration of the self is in jeopardy. In response to such helplessness, the people of Oran resort to superstition, accountancy (obsessive ritualized daily enumerations of the death-toll), and immersion in fantasy (of escape or reminiscence). only a few struggle against the forces of nature, which Camus reveals as symbolizing the natural evil within humankind. Through the character of Tarrou, in Tarrouls excruciatingly beautiful autobiographical statement, Camus portrays the true infection as Ignorance, especially self-ignorance. "I came to understand," says Tarrou, "that 1, anyhow, had had plague through all those long years in which, paradoxically enough, I'd believed with all my soul that I was fighting it ... 0 yes, Rieux, I can say ... 0 that each of us has the plague within him; no one, no one on earth is free from it ... what's natural is the microbe. All the rest—health, integrity, purity (if you like)—is a product of the human will, of a vigilance that must never falter."
In the end the plague left the town of Oran as mysteriously as it had come. It had "achieved its purpose," which was, as Camus avers, enlightenment, knowledge and memory. For "what does that mean—'plague'? Just life, no more than that,' an old man says at the end of the story. Each of us then is plagued by life, infected by a virus of the soul and self, with the potential for evil through ignorance. At the time of its writing, very shortly after World War II, the virus was that of facism; today it may be seen as an epidemic of narcissism and materialism spreading throughout society. Whatever, it might be, Camus states it is a potential evil, always with us, always in us.

Discussion

Dr. Rieux begins his mission in the history of Oran and its inhabitants by proclaiming one of his major messages; the world is filled with "injustice and compromises with the truth' and that he the physician/mentor stands against these venal adjustments. As the town— the world symbolized as Oran—falls under siege from the blows of unknown assailants and becomes plague-d, Rieux assumes another of his roles and begins to function as the voice of reality and the dispeller of myths: "It was only a matter of lucidly recognizing what had to be recognized, of dispelling extraneous shadows and doing what needed to be done. Then the plague would come to an end ... "
Thus Dr. Rieux begins the mission of enlisting his minions into acing the here-and-now, against the past of hypocrisy, of denial, of dependency on false ideals and of offering sacrifice to gods in the place of self-reliance to afford happiness. He does indeed organize an army against the rats—his symbol of those in the world carrying the message of apathy, evil. hypocrisy and reliance on supernatural atonement against evil.
As the plague continues to ravage the inhabitants of his city, Rieux falls into a debate with the purveyor of myths, the local priest, Paneloux. Paneloux promulgates the Sodom-Gamorrah-Job message, that man has evoked punishment by committing sin. Rieux violently disagrees. When one of the children becomes moribund, and Paneloux offers the usual Judaeo-Christian solution, to have faith in God's unknowable benevolence and love, Rieux vehemently responds, "No Father, I've a very different idea of love. And until my dying day, I shall refuse to love a scheme of things in which children are put to torture."
Now comes Rieux's final function, to offer himself as the model for man to emulate and to internalize so as to be self-cohesive antagonist against the noxious and enfeebling forces in life—the false solutions, the unempathic selves within the world and the idea of destiny emanating from supernatural forces. He reveals these aspects of his persona in several interactions, with the journalist Rambert, with his friend and scribe, Tarrou, and with his wife and mother.
The physician's function as the enlightener of man is clear throughout the chronicle that Dr. Rieux has kept of the plague. It becomes clear that "the plague" is a metaphor for a contagious illness in which man is rendered totally self-absorbed by the pathophysiology of the virus of the self. The self-virus has interfered with, and in some cases destroyed, the functions of empathy and its vicissitudes such as compassion and humanism. mour citizens work hard but solely with the object of getting rich." Dr. Rieux wished to 'bear witness in favor of these plague stricken people' so as to state that there are more things 'to admire in men than to despise." He knew that the day would come again when the plague bacillus for 'the enlightening of men would rouse up its rats again." So one function of the physician is as enlightener, the arouser, to evoke empathy and concern for man.
Another function of the physician—to stand against the teachings of the supernatural cults of the Judaeo-Christian ethic—is portrayed throughout the novel. Implicit in Dr. Rieux's call to action to the medical profession and to the political authorities is his opposition to submission to the will of the gods. It is explicit in his debate with the local priest that man is not attacked from above or below by supernatural forces. Man is attacked from within himself by self-illness.
Finally, one of the physician's major functions in this novel is to chronicle the physician as the idealized figure he becomes as the history of the plague-ridden city evolves. His empathy for the diverse people with whom he interacts, his capacity to continue work with no concern for his person, his ability to stay aloof from provocation by the attacks of the reactionary priest and the self-centered journalist reveal him to be the perfect leader and hero for a civilization besieged by self-disease.

Hyman L. Muslin, M.D. and
Jonathan D. Lewis, M.D.
University of Illinois
College of Medicine-Chicago

---

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I recall an undergraduate English professor emphasizing that without imagination humans are nothing but machines. All of the contributors to Body Electric write, many of them from their own experiences, about the field of health care. Such a technological and scientific environment has the tendency to suppress creative thought and action. And so I am thankful to all the voices heard in the fifth edition of this publication. For through their creativity and artistic expression, they have demonstrated that the human spirit is capable of rising above the mechanics of life.

The majority of credit for this edition must be given to Suzanne Poider, PhD, for her guidance, energy, and organization. My gratitude is also extended to Hyman Muslin, MD, for acting as our final judge in the writing contest. And a special thank you must be given to our patient, diligent typists, Lynn Jackson and Bernice Coleman.

Julie Pease

Editor:	JULIE PEASE College of Medicine '92
Advisor:	SUZANNE POIRIER, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Literature and Medicine
Design:	BILL MAYER Office of Publications Services