Health Poems – Personal

Johanna Shapiro, PhD

We patients are very protective
of our dignity
We may lose our battle against
cholesterol
or even lose a leg
But we want to emerge from our
medical encounters with
dignity intact.

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Johanna Shapiro, PhD

Here is my body
I know its wounded places
Here a scarred remnant
Here an imperfect healing
Fissures and canyons of pain
Flowers of suffering
In steps now uncertain
The body still stumbles
Forward. It is ready
I am ready
Hineini
Here I am.

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Johanna Shapiro, PhD

I have read
it is only by learning to fall
that we discover how to live

One cold morning,
when driving through the quiet dust
of inland freeways
we stopped for gas
Rushing toward the warmth
of the convenience store
on my new prosthetic hip
I tripped and went down hard
so hard my bones shook and shivered

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Johanna Shapiro, PhD

I a lowly stricken bug
 lying helpless on my back
  Limbs like feelers scratch the rug
    Both my soul and body wracked

     Cannot move nor turn nor rise
       nor yet even try to crawl
         Upward glancing, curse the skies
           Misery casts a painful pall

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Johanna Shapiro, PhD

Maybe it was because a Bach cantata
was playing in the background

I am on the pre-op surgical floor
stashed away in a curtained cubicle
awaiting my turn in the morning’s surgical line-up

The cubicle next to mine
is full
The same people are in it
a husband caregiver
and a wife
awaiting her turn in the morning’s surgical line-up

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Johanna Shapiro, PhD

My roommate
on the orthopedic ward
Is about 80
Yesterday she fell and broke her hip
while she was doing the laundry
She reached too far for the detergent
And down she went

The next day
after she returns from surgery
she has what the nurse informs me
is post-anesthesia dementia
Basically, she knows who she is
but she can’t understand what happened
to her

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Johanna Shapiro, PhD
May 2008

A minor surgery
outpatient
The assistant
places a sterile pad
with a hole in it
on the surgical field –
my back
Do you like tension?
he asks the doctor
stretching my flesh

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Johanna Shapiro, PhD

What breaks?
Something breaks for sure.
What is it?

The news?
The words shatter
sharp shards spilling out
all around us

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Johanna Shapiro, PhD

If you’re lucky
the doctor enthused
these drops will save your sight

Still trying to get my mind around
this new fact
that I was going blind
I asked about side effects

Hardly worth mentioning,
he said
his back already to me
as he noted in his chart
the decline and fall of my vision

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Johanna Shapiro, PhD and Deane H. Shapiro, Jr., Ph.D.

Let’s say you get cancer
or have a heart attack
or get hit by a bus
You may think you need a doctor
or a hospital
But what you really need
is a lesson in etiquette

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