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Fisher Price School of Medicine

by Hakim Bellamy

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Written for the Health Affairs (peer reviewed journal) "Narrative Matters" Symposium.

lyrics

Fisher Price School of Medicine

I.

The last time I went to the doctor
I was 11.

She was more pigtails than lab coat.
Her only qualification was a plastic
stethoscope. The glasses she wore
had no lenses. Not exactly an optometrist
but her iQ was no stretch of the imagination.
She could see exactly what
was wrong with me, after just a handful
of questions. Diet, lifestyle, heart break,
heart break, heart...

She was elevator music.
I was slightly high blood pressure,
otherwise the picture of health.
She somehow knew that a smile
was the best kind of medicine,

So she gave me hers.
As I left, I took mine too,
and called her in the morning.

II.

The next time I go to the doctor’s,
I will have some questions for her.
I will ask her why everyday I get out of bed
and feel less and less eleven?
Why my joints never ached in bad weather,
but hollow every night, at 5:30 & 6:00pm
when the weatherman brings bad news?

I'd ask her if life is a death sentence,
if living is a terminal disease?
Sometimes this ride begins 
and ends in an emergency room,
but it really starts and stops in between.

I'd ask her what happened to house visits?
Tell her all about how I've been sleeping,
over a cup of tea,
because the six minute average
doctor-patient interaction
is not enough to "treat" me.

I will unpack my recurring nightmares
before her like a roadmap to my anxiety. 
Take a handful of all those lil pretty purple pills,
that I refuse to let her prescribe me,
and connect the dots back to my historical trauma.

I will explain to her why every time I push and twist
the top off them drug store bottles it smells like cotton.
That it is not her job to childproof me from my past,
that there aren't enough milligrams in that script
to rewrite it or fix it, her job ain't even to help me live with it.
Her job is to help me outlive it.

Then, I will pour her another cup, because I am not done.

I will ask her to explain me the difference
between healthcare and "who cares."
I will ask her what it will take
to incentivize death prevention?

I will suggest,
that if the the measure of a health professional
is how many lives they save,
why wait ’til we roll into the examination room sideways 
when it should profit her to protect us
while we are still standing up?

Will we wait
until more black boys die at the hands of police
than diabetes to consider violence
an institutional health issue?

Will we wait
until our children put two and two together;
do the math, the science,
the English and the Social Studies
only to remind us, every few months or so,
that broken school plus broken homes
means the game is fixed.

Will we wait
’til Mother Nature is in hospice,
her immune system thin as ozone,
her polar caps bald as chemo,
to reconsider what “World Health Organization”
aught to mean?

When will we start saving lives outside?

...and she will be waiting,
for me to finally stop asking questions.
And I will tell her,
we've been waiting to death,
like patients.
When we are wanting to be fed,
like pupils with the potential to bloom.

The next time I see her,
I will tell her there's no need to wash her hands.
The dirtier, the better.
Leave your sleeves rolled up.

We need more than a Surgeon General,
we need a Pediatric Infantry.
A frontline of physicians 
slingin' arms into armistices,
instead of armor and stitches.

Because I'm no PhD,
but it stands to reason that war
is pretty much the most unhealthy thing we do to ourselves,
next to not brushing our teeth.
It's more than a cavity in the ground,
it's a cavity of the soul, and I know
what she'll say...

“Dammit Jim,
I'm not a pastor.”

However, unlike a priest
you aren't just there at dusk 
to hold hands, close eyelids
and console us.

You are also there at dawn.
The first sight for sore eyes,
and if we're lucky, even a smack on the behind
to comfort us.

And I just wish,
I saw you a few more Sundays in between.
Because there's so much healing to do
that I don't wanna wait ’til I'm hurt
to see a doctor.

III.

The last time I ever go see a doctor,
I will ask her
what took her so long?

I'll wonder,
after this many years
and that many smarts,
how in heaven
she still hasn't found
a vaccine for broken hearts?

Or a way to add padding
to the walls of my father's brain
so his memories can't escape?

I'll tell her my worst dreams
of high school cafeterias
with semi-automatic handguns
in vending machines.

I'll suggest,
that there is no such thing
as a "mental health day"
in a world so chemically imbalanced,
biological warfare is in our blood stream.
It's more like a staycation
in a hospital or a holding cell,
incarcerated in our membranes
and retail therapy, is a grossly inadequate cure.

I'll ask her if I'll live,
and she won't make any promises
or percentages.
She won't even order an X-Ray or a MRI,
because she's got the same magic glassless glasses
she's had since she was 9.
She already knows what's inside.

Her laugh will have the same
effect it did on my blood pressure when I was 11.

She'll tell me I'm not crazy,
just a hypochondriac.
That we're all dying daily
and some of us are just waiting,
better or worse,
slower and faster
than others.

She'll give me a smile,
and tell me it's contagious.
Then send me back out into this ecosystem
of people smoking on treadmills
and jogging into the smog.

But at least she'll call,
and practice the forgotten art 
of “checking on me tomorrow.”
And when I ask her again,
if I'll live?

She'll tell me the truth.
She'll say "No, 
but you'll be okay.”

(c) Hakim Bellamy November 3, 2014

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released November 3, 1978
Hakim Bellamy

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Hakim Be Albuquerque, New Mexico

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