scope 2009-FINAL.qxd_scope06Final.qxd - SIU School of Medicine

There Are Times I Don’t Like to Write
22 SCOPE 2009
time and again
those times spent writing
not to loved ones, but to you...
To be a surgeon instead—
there are those times, too.
Yes, I’d like to
give you a warm heart and a chance
for a new lease on life;
or cut your gall bladder and
release the jaundice from your sight.
Or be a psychiatrist to fathom if
you’d do it
to your mother
or
your wife,
or
to your own child
the way you do it
to my patients
when you deny them treatments
to alleviate their plight,
to give hope,
let them feel like humans,
not ICD-9 codes;