I’m Still Your Doctor

I happen to be there when you’re admitted.
My job is to keep you alive at any cost.
Lucky for you that I have experience
& I’m really good at diagnosing

the opportunistic diseases of AIDS.
So when you have the bad luck
to have a rare pneumonia
& a virus attacking your eyes,

I load you up with several toxins.
to save your vision, to save your life.
You’re hesitant about being treated.
I’m sure you won’t be when you feel better.

In time I get to see you in the office.
You’ve gained weight & look healthy.
You wear a beaded & embroidered
white sherwani & matching kufi

over your neat & corn-rowed hair.
You look resplendent. You’ve come to say
that after long thought & deliberation,
you’ve decided to stop taking meds

I prescribed so you can pursue
Qur’anic healing under the guidance
of the mullah at your mosque.
My job as your doctor is to let

you make your own decision,
even if I know it means
you’ll die.  I tell you I disagree
with your choice. I tell you

I support you & that I’m still
your doctor. That was the last
time I saw you, except in the picture
over your obituary in the Press.

About This Poem:

• This was the second poem I had published, in 2012 in an online journal called Barefoot Review (now defunct).
• They accepted two of the poems I wrote in Cindy King’s Advanced Poetry class at Stockton University.
• I wouldn’t have submitted them, but it was an assignment for the class. Cindy paired the students up, and each student submitted for their partner. The idea was to lower the anxiety about submission and to get experience in researching suitable journals.
• I wrote the poem 12 years after the patient encounter that inspired it.
• It predated my experience in hospice and palliative care when I often heard myself say, “Patients have the right to make bad decisions.” It’s hard, as a doctor, to support a patient when you disagree with them, yet abandonment is not an option for me.