The physician-narrator is looking in on a 30 year old
patient named Ricky. Readers immediately
learn that the patient has cerebral palsy:
his ear mashed flat, his neck contorted into a tight C, almost
quadriplegic. These first stanza clinical
observations are indisputable. The
narrator then shifts from the medical facts to more subjective thoughts ranging
from Ricky’s previous treatment responses and medications to Ricky’s adult heterosexual
response to the proximity of a female, and finally to the narrator’s own wishes
for this patient. Ricky’s parents, the narrator notes, have similarly
but uncomfortably witnessed their son’s ogling response to a pretty nurse or
doctor or a provocative adult television
image. The parents’ response, he notes, to these observations has been to redirect Ricky’s
focus by switching the channel to Nickelodeon, a program geared towards
children.
Not unlike situations in several writings by William Carlos
Williams, this physician has moved from objective medical information to his
own interior thoughts about Ricky’s circumstances and confinement. Rather than sticking with the facts associated
with the patient’s medical condition, he wonders, imagines, and expresses in
this poem seemingly un-doctorly thoughts.
The poems in this collection celebrate many of the patients Dr. Schiedermayer has encountered in his practice, and what they have taught him. Most of the poems are vignettes of patients or narratives of medical encounters. The poet begins by "rummaging / with my hand / at the bottom" of his medical bag ("Black Bag"); he needs something more than the usual instruments. He writes wryly about Ricky ("Skin for Ricky"), a 30 year old man with cerebral palsy, who has normal human desires and aspirations; and compassionately about "A Poet Benefactor," who is suffering from breast cancer.
As Dr. Schiedermayer notes in "Amputation," his first serious lesson in medicine is "what you must lose." You must certainly lose a sense of invulnerability--but by becoming vulnerable to your patients' stories, you may also become a source of healing. In the end he gives thanks "for more love than I deserve."
