drops
cherry-red blossoms
from his hospital bed
drops
he couldn’t spare
seeds of vitality
too precious to scatter so…
blossoms
drop pale from his funeral bed
blossoms
he never saw
seeds of finality
to wither as the mourners go…
I penned this plaintive poem as my Grandaddy was admitted for the last time to Louisville Baptist Hospital for end-stage multiple myeloma. I was a second-year medical student, as relentlessly insecure a human being as I had ever been. I knew nothing, and (worse than knowing nothing) I knew I knew nothing! A quietly rebellious soul, tethered by a deep love of learning, I had made my way through high school as a “freak who got good grades”, and through college by gunning, pulling all-nighters, and some obscure force of desperation I still do not comprehend. Finding myself in medical school surrounded by other desperate and (more) highly competent gunners, I sought to run in the center of the pack, in part to blend in and in part to nurse my uncertainty about my choice of career. You see, at my core I was an artist. Had a made a huge mistake in choosing medicine?
In the fall of the second year, we were just beyond the shores of anatomy and physiology, facing the steepening waves of pharmacology and pathophysiology, physical diagnosis and interpretation of electrocardiograms. The sonorous foghorns of medical terminology blared in the near distance, the harsh tones of our new mother tongue. The deep open waters of full-on responsibility for patient care were almost upon us.
Seeing the uncharacteristic frailness of my Grandaddy, a lifelong railroad man of towering build and famously booming wit, I was at least able to discern that it was time to call in the rest of the family, especially his children, who lived some distance away. I had an inkling that his pancytopenia had finally snagged him. The transfusions had become more frequent, the renal function tests more asymptotic. But I was sinking. My family’s questions for me, the “only” doctor in a long line of Midwestern farmers, were quickly washing over me. The factoids that pinballed in my head had to do with relative costs of intravenous antibiotics, how Coulter counters worked, or other answers to multiple choice questions. Was I completely unequal to the task I had set for myself?
As fearful anticipation of the worst indeed became reality, and he died on All Saints Day, I sensed the beginning of a shift. I realized that what my family was seeking from me was what they sought from all doctors, which was reassurance, humanity, compassion. Yes, medical expertise was the practical tool, but the underlying character of the person learning to wield the tool was at least as important. This I could do! With time, I also recognized that artistic sensibilities, in the form of intuition, perceiving connectedness in creative ways, and candid expression, were in fact essential to the practice of medicine.
It has been 40 years since the loss of my beloved Grandaddy, and the crisis of self I navigated at that time. I choose to believe that my fathomless insecurity as I embarked on the path of medicine has served me well, after all: that humility, a willingness to admit ignorance, and a quiet steadfastness enabled an improbable transition to a form of grace never fully crystallized until now.
One can be a doctor and an artist.