Local Grand Valley Physician Shares Two Poems on COVID
In college I studied creative writing, but then went to medical school and didn’t have the time or brain space to write for 10 years. I have spent the last seven years working as a physician in the Grand Valley and just started writing again the past three years here.
While caring for patients with COVID, I began to feel burned out. So many patients couldn’t catch their breath, couldn’t wake up, couldn’t leave the bed, and couldn’t have family come and tell us who this person was beforehand. Dozens died. It was hard to be a part of. Writing became one way for me to connect to my patients on a human level, when I couldn’t speak to them as I normally would. I still don’t feel normal after a 12-hour shift in an N95 with goggles and gloves, but at least I can imagine other ways of us being people together.
~ Christopher Meinzen
What can I tell you of death?
We do not see it in our clean halls.
It is not permitted.
We spend our energy on the sick,
the dead must be covered and carried away.
I do not even know where they go.
When I arrive in the hospital before dawn
I put on my white coat and review the list:
the worried well,
those approaching too close to death, but mostly
those who merely need a nudge back to life.
I delve into strategies, therapeutics, and testing
to find wherever death could hide.
My patients, feeling better, promise to again live
healthy, vibrant lives.
We all congratulate ourselves obliquely on another day avoiding death.
We joke in the break rooms,
“room 326 tried to die twice this morning.” But of course
the idea is ridiculous. There is no trying,
and there is no death here.
What can I know about death?
I spent my 20s learning how to keep people alive, despite the bleeding
and however many organs may fail.
The hours were spent studying, eating and drinking and
caffeinating again in sterile rooms
lined with skin and organs soaking in formalin.
We studied pathology slides, dissected limbs, memorized
all the many diseases that had nothing to do with our young bodies.
You ask me what it is like. The time I couldn't avoid death.
The nurses had paged me late to the resuscitation.
It should not have been me at all.
By the time I arrived everyone had left but one nurse and the chaplain.
"We need you to declare him dead,” they explained.
I went into the room.
It was empty except for an old body. Pale,
mottled, stretched out on a flat bare bed. Pillows on the floor.
The shoulder propped up stiffly on the bed rail, dislocated.
No rise of the rib cage,
also bent up at odd angles. There
was no pulse hidden in the wrist or neck. Abrasions were left from compressions
in the chest and upper abdomen.
Some blood slowly coagulated on the lips..
The hand had fallen open, fingers cold and white
and nailbeds dark.
Were the palms getting more purple as I watched?
What was there to see or to say?
How does one person declare a fact so obvious as death? And yet,
how did it get here
in our house of life?
Coping
I dream I am way up in the sky
But I am not flying
It mostly feels like falling
I wake up and
Nothing changes
I’m still up in the sky
Still scared of what’s below me
Still hurtling through the air
You are not falling
My boss says
You are not alone way up there
This is a normal feeling that we all overcome
But I am way up here
I say
And if it looks and feels and howls like falling
What else could it be
It is because you’re thinking about it wrong
My friend says
Being up in the sky is liberating
People pay money for this
You should be thankful you haven’t hit the ground
My coworkers say
People fall out of the sky all the time
At least we haven’t hit the ground yet
Maybe they are right
Maybe I’m not falling
Or if I am then it is okay
Maybe I won’t hit the ground any minute
Or if I fall asleep
Editor’s Note: One poem was removed from the article.