The Risks of Empathy
(May, 2001)
If I climb into the same boat as you
Will it sink?
If I walk a mile in your shoes
Will I get blisters?
If my heart bleeds for you,
Will I need a transplant?
If I see the world through your eyes
Will I go blind?
If I feel your pain,
How much analgesic will I need?
If I understand your point of view
Will I end up skewered on that same sharp point?
If I hear what you’re saying
Will I develop ear ache?
If my heart goes out to you,
Will I ever get it back?
If I could be you
Could the same bad things happen to me?
If I am you
Then who am I?
SURPRISE
In 2004, I was 55 years old. I was a full professor, married 34 years, my children grown and embarked on independent lives, and the grandmother of an adorable little boy with two more grandkids on the way. I thought of myself as a healthy older woman. My primary care doctor had diagnosed me as perimenopausal, and so I was not alarmed by irregular and sometimes heavy periods. But in the fall of that year I had a couple of very heavy bleeding episodes, and was referred to a gynecologist whom I’d seen about a year and a half ago for some unexplained uterine and pelvic discomfort. He sent me for an ultrasound. When I asked the tech what he saw, he said an irregular mass. At the time, I didn’t know what a scary word “irregular” was although mass sounded bad. I was still hoping it was fibroids.
After the ultrasound, the gynecologist said I needed surgery. I remember saying to him in an attempt at lightheartedness, “You have to keep me alive for this little guy” and showed him a picture of my 18 month old grandson. He didn’t promise that he would, which was also scary.
I wanted a colleague at UCI to do the surgery, but he was out of the country and wouldn’t return for two weeks. When I emailed him could I wait until he returned, he replied, “I wouldn’t advise it.” He referred me to a community gyn-onc.
Johanna Shapiro
You think you know me
but you don’t
You think you know how to help me
but you don’t.
Does he hit you? You wonder
I don’t want to sound
like our former president
but I have to ask
What do you mean by “hit”?
Because it’s true he can be rough
but it’s not like
he’s beaten me to a pulp.
Johanna Shapiro, PhD
Once
on a beach in a distant land
holding my mother’s hand
I found a conch
perfectly whole
its smooth pink interior
irresistible
Hold it to your ear
my mother said
You will hear the sea
Johanna Shapiro, PhD
An ocular stroke
Could it be oracular?
Open your eyes! See!
Johanna Shapiro, PhD
(November, 2004)
The bad news is
You might have ovarian cancer
The good news is
You might not
Wait two weeks
We’ll do surgery
To find out.
You scream, you rage
You revise your will
But you wait two weeks
Which seem like two years
Then surgeons split you
Down the middle
Peel you apart with retractors
Plunge in, snip and cut
Johanna Shapiro, PhD
During the past seven months of quarantine during the coronavirus pandemic, I go virtually nowhere other than to visit my doctors and my dentist. My only walking is around our neighborhood. At the end of the street (which is long and meandering), there is a dead-end that provides a vista of hills and a vast, uncluttered sky. When I reach this point, I’ve taken to raising my arms wide and uttering the following prayer: “Protect Your servants. Help your people. Save Your world.” (Since, over the course of history, the Lord’s servants have been a motley crew, I clarify that, at this point in time, I am referring to the essential workers and frontline doctors and nurses battling COVID-19). I say this 3 times, each time separated by a respectful pause (which is inevitably met with silence – but it might be a Divine Silence, which could be full of answers – who knows what anything really means these days?).
Johanna Shapiro, PhD
These are your doctors
drinking themselves into oblivion
jumping off rooftops
huddled sobbing on a bridge
sinking to the floor
outside their patient’s room
They know how to choose
Just the right drugs
to make the world disappear
they know exactly where
to place the gun