The following appeared in Volume 98, Number 1 (Fall, 1998) of the APA Newsletters

My son’s ears are infected again
the ENT doctor explains.
A dozen infections
and his ears are showing the strain -
a mild hearing loss.
Needs surgery,
little tubes, the physician says.
I look up, bewildered at the word.
Surgery is for patients.
Surgery is for an objective body
beneath sterile drapes,
an acquaintance who needs repair.
Surgery is not for my son
my boy with the wheat-colored hair
who wears diapers
beneath He-Man underwear,
who eats popsicles in the bathtub
with the gusto of a cowboy drinking gin.
Surgery is not for him.

Thursday the ninth at Children’s Hospital
the otolaryngologist is saying -
only 20 minutes
a few puffs of anaesthesia
goes home same day.

So now we are patients, already feeling
the odd powerlessness.
We had a party scheduled that day
but how can you refuse a surgery date?
When the OR is open
you take the opening.
You lie on the table
and go to sleep
and get operated on.
You trust yourself or
your husband or wife or children
to this stranger
but you are scared and helpless.
You lay on the table, sans white costume
or three-piece suit, or,
in my son’s case, sans Dracula cape,
fireman helmet, and white pointed boots.

In the outpatient surgery department
they put hospital pajamas on my son
drew an incredible amount of blood
from a finger stick, and still
I was calm.
But then they called from the OR
and I went along with the nurse,
my son crying a bit
on the flimsy, high-railed stretcher.
The west elevator wasn’t working
so we went to the central elevator
and I began to worry.
The anaesthesia resident’s bedside manner
was good, but he was still only a resident.
Would he do the case?
The staff was my age.
Was that old enough?
The ENT surgeon looked old
in off-blue paper, perhaps older
than his prime. His hands shook.
The nurses seemed a bit disorganized
as they wheeled my son away
and they bumped his bed into the door.

Then the wait.
Never underestimate twenty minutes -
plenty of time to be crippled,
go into coma, or die.
Loads of time.
Long, long time
waiting in one little room
or another,
hearing mechanical doors
open and close.

Doors open.
My son’s ears have tubes in them now;
simple twenty minute operation
no problems at all.
See him again in ten days
the otolaryngologist says
looking strong and benign
in his blues.
I begin to believe in him again.
No problems at all,
just a little outpatient surgery
nothing to worry about.
Until they’re your son’ ears.

Reprinted from House Calls, Round, Heldings: A Poetic Casebook, Galen Press, 1996