You Are My Patient

My sister-in-law, Mary Ann, wrote to her hospital for the 2010 Wisconsin Health Care Employee Pride Program, and she won! She could submit either a story or poem 300 words or less that told her story of what inspires her in her job or why she continues to work in the health care industry. Her poem is as follows:

You Are My Patient

~ By Mary Ann E.

You are the frightened child down the hall,
Crying, you miss your mom, I answer your call.
You are the widower we transfer off of the cart,
With a fractured hip and a broken heart.
You are a young mom, not very old,
With a beautiful new baby you eagerly hold.
You are a young man, about my son’s age,
Newly diagnosed with cancer, the fourth stage.
You are the forty-two year old with chest pain, anxious and scared,
Accompanied by family who obviously cared.
You are the elderly woman, slowly losing her mind,
Who responds to a voice, gentle and kind.
You are a gentleman of seventy-three,
Learning to navigate with your newly replaced knee.
You are from Bethesda, cognitively impaired,
So many strange faces, you are so scared.
You are the young man in ER who brought in his wife,
So hard to watch her losing her life.
You are the *COPD’er struggling for each breath,
Praying once again that you can cheat death.
I’ve never before known you, I meet you by chance,
Brought together by my work and your circumstance.
You are more than your illness. You have a name, a life.
You are someone’s son or daughter, husband, or wife.
None of you are a burden. You bring me so much,
When I look at you with my heart or handle you with a gentle touch.
All of you are my patients. You are real. You are brave.
And you all inspire me!


*COPD stands for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, such as emphysema.