Rescue, a poem
“Guilt feels like a weight on my chest,” says the physical therapist. “We are expected to above and beyond our daily work with clients.
We are expected to research, contribute to scholarship, earn grants – all on our own time.
There’s so much more that needs to be done, and I believe everyone, regardless of background, should get the treatment they need.” However, with stakes this high, burnout feels imminent. “On one hand,” she explained, “I am proud to be an expert in a niche field, but on the other hand, I’m made to feel overworked and underappreciated.”
She goes on to explain how many in her field love the work they do, and want to help their client progress, but at what cost? If this passion could translate into a dream job away from physical therapy, the same love would arrive by running a dog rescue where each animal heals and grows at its own pace, where they can roam together or swim alone in peace.
Rescue
Isn’t greatness the ability to give
above and beyond, beyond, and beyond?
Isn’t the work we do the giving,
despite its heaviness,
despite one’s own needs which
sit dense and tight like guilt?
Isn’t that what greatness requires?
Why else am I still going?
It’s as if we’ve been told,
there’s more to greatness than
greatness. As if greatness is
a pill we swallow every day,
and a horizon stretching
wider than it was yesterday, as if
it all keeps expanding because
we believe it to exist, believe its power
with each grant, each patient,
each course taught, each spark
tamed into a light bulb
expected to burn forever.
But what if greatness is
abandon, freedom?
In some imaginary future, picture
wide acres, dogs rescued and newly
un-domesticated running in a pack,
their freedom like Florida dust
settled on their coats, paws callused
and churning in a shallow pool
where each creature howls an
indulgent karaoke to the moon.
How each good dog barks its good
throat into good song, into good peace.
Interspersed with the joys and worries of being a gramma, she recounted her own grandparents – challenges and opportunities of caring for them, grief of losing them, gratitude for being loved by them, and the everyday experiences of now living in their home.
What is pain without a diagnosis? This is what occupied this patient before she even received her breast cancer diagnosis about a year ago.
She told me that she picked her battles more and was trying to be less of a people pleaser.
He ended up talking about his son, who is now his daughter. Another part of his experience of continual growth and soul-opening.
Her values and perspective on life had changed as she considered ways to spend more time with her husband.
“When I see an old dude who’s optimistic, living his life, I always stop to talk to him to try to find out what he has done.”
This nurse was considering leaving a position where she spent many years due to issues she experienced and witnessed at her hospital.
Many of the people he worked with had to develop a new identity in the context of their caregiving responsibilities. “It’s as if they need to become a new variant of themselves.”
“We’re taught to enter a room with a specific goal... with assumptions... with a hypothesis about what may be going on with the patient.”
She believes that most of those who have connected with ACS began with a personal connection, but then, according to her, “you evolve, and you shift.”
With her background in counseling and psychology, she works to bring people together and support patients.
Although at times she becomes discouraged about the inequalities in the world, she is determined to do her part by making sure everyone has access to quality healthcare.
This person radiated gratitude and hope. She shared that she discovered she was expecting a son just before receiving a lung cancer diagnosis at the age of 31.
She had an epiphany as a child — that love could heal the world. Now, as a seasoned physician, there’s still a part of her that believes in the power of love, but not with the same idealism she once held.
He talked about recently speaking with a patient who experiences migraines: she is seeking the truth, he is seeking the truth to find a way to work with her, wanting to give more than a diagnosis and prognosis.
To her, the surgical world has felt like “a wheel that keeps spinning,” a seemingly endless pursuit towards an undefinable goal.
While she kept an open mind throughout medical school, the field of OB/GYN ticked off all the boxes for her.
“I was at a birth recently and thought: This is why they are so afraid of us. They can’t control this” She sat on her couch with a mug of coffee. She is a queer, femme, mother of two who has worked in reproductive health for over two decades.
“The historic traumas of African-American women — all African-Americans — lead us to not be the first people at the doctors, nor the first to get surgery.”
“Sometimes I feel so helpless,” said this resident, reflecting on all of the challenges faced by the young patients and their families whom she served. Over the last several days, she has become increasingly overwhelmed by events in the news and has questioned her ability to make a difference in the world.
“It’s hard to watch the decline and sometimes hard to visit but it weighs on me not to,” she said. Her father had always been an elaborate storyteller and an alive, vibrant man with a big voice.
The Good Listening Project was honored to once again take part in the annual KNN conference in Minneapolis this year. Jenny closed the session by writing this harvest poem that captured the voices and sentiments shared.
After a history of crippling endometriosis, this woman had an arduous, ongoing struggle with her healthcare community for the right to have a hysterectomy. She was finally granted approval at the age of 29. “It had been like pulling teeth, but finally I felt free,” she told me.
Her childhood was infused with Hawaiian-Polynesian music and dance, taught to her father by his mother. Today, her life’s work is to connect the unbelievable discoveries of molecularly focused pre-clinical research directly to the patient experience of treatment.
She is a single mother born to a single mother and had to grow up fast. She is juggling a sticky work situation, her own anxiety and depression, and being away from home and her kids.
I was invited to create a group poem for forty participants at the Arts in Healing luncheon, hosted by the Inova Health Foundation in partnership with the board.
What does it mean for people living with Sickle Cell Disease to be seen, heard, and understood? For this person, it meant finding – and using – her voice to advocate for herself and for others.
“I’ve experienced a lot of big losses,” she said. “I want to be a beacon of hope and light, keeping the flame lit for cancer prevention.”
Professionally, for this person, Henrietta Lacks’ story represents the need to critically examine our research infrastructure.