Poetry

Here you will find some of Grant’s poetry related to medicine. Please enjoy.

Experiment

experiment with pain,

experiment with joy,

play with punctuation,

and question

whether some words

should be shouted

or whispered.

 

for there is science in everything

and a single hypothesis

can be as small as an utterance

bravely answering the question

“what if?”

Desperate

Like a miner along the Colorado river,

I am desperately trying to hold onto

as many experiences as I can

to learn as much as my patients

are willing to teach me.

Knowing full well

I can only remember so much,

that a bucket is meant to release water just as much

as it is meant to hold onto it.

And letting go is often the hardest part

My student clinician oath

I will be true to myself.

And in the thickest thicket,

I will remain the bravest cricket.

Linguistic decisions

Here, in English,

we are taught to make

a decision.

“Put your nickel down,”

I am often told in the clinic.

Fitting for the land of innovation,

the pioneers of medicine,

to focus on shaping destiny.

 

But it provides me solace

that elsewhere, in Spanish, they say

toma una decisión

(take a decision),

knowing full well

there are different paths;

and that taking one

may often preclude the other.

A finality that is lost

in the English translation.

 

Perhaps my favorite though,

is how it is said in German

that a decision is met.

That resonates with me the most:

the concept of meeting a decision

invokes two parties,

whether the party

is the physician and the patient

or the person and a higher being.

That somehow decisions

are intertwined with fate.

That you are never alone

when choosing.

Like water

Medicine is not linear,

it is circular,

revising and changing

over and over -

remembering and forgetting

then finding new again.

 

Like water, it finds its home

temporary, over hot rocks,

boiling into mist,

giving life along the riverbed,

while assaulting the salty shore.

 

And through it all

I am grateful to have drank

from her source.

 

I await to see

how it will change me.

I await to see

what parts of her I keep

and what parts of her

I must return.

Elopement

You left yesterday

with your IV still in place.

I wonder if you thought about me

as you stepped out the door,

like I thought about you

as I stepped in.

The devil is in the details

There are three generations in this room

all to help you through this time.

But something else is here with you, too -

the men of old would have called it a devil,

the lay man maybe fate.

But trained as I am, it is a challenge.

one I spend the entire night researching –

all with the hope that our medical field has within it

enough objectivity to face this very unknown

Jade

A jade bracelet clings onto her thinning wrist,

placed there many years prior,

with great effort, no doubt,

(for those who know how hard it is);

back when her wrist was meatier,

and more full of life.

 

Back then, there was much discord

about whether the jade was authentic

or merely a fake.

There were tests done,

inspections from family and friends,

this Jade was an investment towards life.

 

Nevertheless, she lived her life believing so,

that the jade was authentic,

and therefore imbued with ancient magic-

the type to ward off the evils of all kind,

even the ones in this darkened hospital room,

where the green bracelet definitely doesn’t belong.

 

It has me wondering

whether or not it matters at all

that the jade is authentic,

or whether the thought itself is enough.

whether the will to keep on living

isn’t the strongest (and most important) thing

in this sterile room.

Time

Time seems a cruel thing.

It takes that which was so important

and turns it into fibrosis, into lysis, into dust.

Our tepid memories attempt to take

what was there,

but it’s too dependent

on blood and body,

so it fades, too.

Books and pictures so rarely carry with them

anything more than a two-dimensional picture,

and fewer and fewer people stay long enough

to extract anything else.

It is all almost as if Time

begs us to forget.

As if she is teaching us over and over again

that each moment is not beautiful

because it can be remembered,

but because it can be experienced.

Et. Al.

is inscribed on my stethoscope.

As it is placed on your chest,

its thick black cord reverberating,

I am reminded of the voices

that stood up for me,

the hands that reach out for mine,

the shoulders of giants.

And importantly, too,

the many of yours,

some waiting just outside the door

to hear the verdict,

and the others than plan to visit later

when the doctors are done doctoring,

and even those who have passed,

whose memories you carry with you

to guide you through these trying times.

Two villages meet

at the diaphragm

of the stethoscope.

A heart beats

for more than one.

Lessons of the hand

There are hidden clues in medicine.

And some believe they reside in the hand.

“Clubbing” of the fingers,

predicts an issue with the lungs.

Darkened spots on the fingertips,

a potential infection hidden in the heart.

A darkened stripe on the nail

a potential skin cancer.

 

One physician I worked with

would pay particular attention to the hand,

looking for skin tenting

as signs of dehydration,

a resting tremor

concerning for Parkinson’s,

redness of the palms

as a sign of liver failure.

 

He would stress the importance

of a handshake with the patient

beyond the formal expectations.

“Did you know the sailors

used to check for syphilis

with a single handshake,”

enlarged lymph nodes are a later sign

of infection.

 

I’ve also come to also appreciate

you learn, too, about who they are

beyond their medical needs:

the presence of callouses

with hard, manual labor;

colorful playful nails

with a sense of decorum;

a strong firm handshake,

a father who stressed it so

Prose

Pulling Thread Hypothesis

The value of thread is that it can be pulled, that it promises to hold, that its finish is neat, that it will please, that it will sell. However, so little attention is paid to the thread itself. Value in our capitalistic society is based largely on function and utility. There is an emphasis on credentials, titles, and money. Our current climate distills beauty to dollars for simplicity and exchange. Concerningly, this mode of commerce entrains us to value things in a way that is concrete and functional, but ultimately unfair.

This way of valuation infects how one perceives others. We learn how to quickly discern properties about a person as soon as we meet them. Part of this is biological. Being able to quickly judge whether someone is a threat is what separates life and death. But this instinct leads us to judge too quickly. Often, we extend this judgement beyond threats, to stereotypes and ultimately, to valuations. If one makes a habit of valuing things or people, one is quick to judge people’s worth. We do this at both a conscious and subconscious level, whether we intend to or not. When we see a doctor, we expect a certain type of decorum and worth associated with that individual.

When this method of valuation is reflected onto ourselves, it can quickly become pathological. Valuating ourselves through the lens of capitalism means you only value what you produce. You value the pull, the promise, the finish, whether you please, whether you sell. It rarely ever values the thread. It rarely ever values you. This method of valuation is guaranteed to undervalue nearly every aspect of character.

 ________________

I became a father in the summer of 2023. When I held my newborn child in my hand, I did not care about the promise of anything. He could be whatever he wanted to be; make the mistakes he needed; love whoever deserved him. More importantly, he was who he was then. A healthy baby boy. And I had him in my arms. He gave me the gift of the moment.

I knew right then that he would likely make the same mistakes that I did up until that very moment. He started fresh and would be so impressionable that he would see his own worth as promise of future returns. He would be consumed by the same capitalistic and utilitarian view we all shared. All because everyone would pull his thread. They would ask him what he wanted to be when he grew up. If he succeeded at something, they would praise him for doing so. If he was useful at work, he would be rewarded. If he made someone happy, he would be loved. All of these gains, conditional.

I knew because up until I held him in my arms, I did the same thing. I viewed myself only through the lens of my aspirations. I chose to become a scientist. I chose to become a physician. And I exceled at those things. But soon I found that my worth was intricately tied to my output. Whether I could produce good scientific studies. Whether I could remember medical facts. My value only came based on how well I could pull my own thread.

Up until the moment I held him, I couldn’t see my own worth beyond the conditional. But once I held him, he gave me more than the gift of the moment, he gave me omnipotence. I could see my thread and those forces that pulled me. Through him, I saw myself.

 That would be a challenge he will have to face on his own. Despite all the pulling by others, he will one day have to see the fiber of his own being. Recognize it. Appreciate it. It is what makes him him. And it is exactly how I saw him the moment he was born. If I attempt to interfere, I might unintentionally add to the pulling forces.

 

The power of being a parent is not only creating a child, but seeing the child for their true nature when everyone else is blind.

March, 2024