Here Comes Trouble
Boom magazine here in Athens has a current issue devoted to people and their pets during the pandemic. Both my cats Max and Tony certainly know the comforting and soothing powers of a favorite pet. Here is a poem from my 2016 visit to MD Anderson Cancer Hospital in Houston. The tests were good, and I enjoyed humorous incidents; at one point Peggy walked into the operating room with a tape of cat Max purring. As you will see, I needed all the help I could get. Enjoy. Gene
“Here Comes Trouble”
I’m not brave around medics
giving me the skinny on my illness,
but with age I’m bucking up.
They saved my life at MD Anderson
against sarcoma, not without humor
in the operating room and elsewhere,
sparked by the voice of cat Max purring
me into that dire chamber like a cantor,
after two false starts
for white-coat effect on blood pressure,
after my kindly surgeon and her team
came fully suited from scrubbing yet again,
determined not to turn me into Captain Ahab
with peg-leg, the old remedy, whale or no.
On the latest post-op, an elevator muse
inspired my stand-up comic: “Somebody here
is smoking pot.” Loud laugh among cancer patients.
Not surprising that I was greeted in vital signs
with “Here comes trouble,” from the lead nurse,
chuckles rising from nail-biting patients…
an invitation for me to hold forth…
Didn’t Hippocrates teach you Do No Harm,
first rule of your saw-bones art?
Why push pressure up when I provide
normal daily numbers from my spiffy monitor?
–Eugene C. Bianchi, Houston, Texas, Dec. 1, 2016
