Day 317: An Ode To Charity Hospital

One hour behind schedule, mom has just been wheeled into the surgical wing after waving to my family.  The woman is a trooper, while my poor, nervous father paces in the wings.  It’s equally frustrating and edifying to observe two people more unlike one another and who could not live without the other.  42 years married, they still passionately battle and then hold hands like newlyweds (while the sibling and I roll our eyes and emit gacking sounds in the background).

Speaking of the brother, he informs me that there is no need for worry – everything is under control.  As a well-known physician in the area himself, he knows her whole surgical and care team at ACH personally and trusts my mother will be given the utmost in modern and respectful treatment.  “Enough bullets sweat.  Seriously, your father and you need a padded cell in times of crises … mostly so you can’t hurt yourselves.”  While talking with him, I stand at my office window and look in the direction of City Park.  The top of Charity Hospital‘s decaying hull catches my eye.  That once-gleaming edifice was a place of care, too.  Now, it treats no one.

A few months ago, my ever-so-stoic brother heard that Charity has been condemned and slated for destruction.  His surprisingly emotional and sad reaction comes rushing back, “It’s a shame that Charity will no longer exist.  What a great place of treatment and learning it was up to the end.  Did you know that some of the world’s greatest doctors came out of Charity?  I’m incredibly disheartened to see it go.”

That such a sterile and cold place (to me, the only non-medically-inclined one of the family) can evoke such passion is amazing.  As is the following poem written by a doctor for Charity and published in a recent issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.  brimful, who sent it to me, said, “I don’t know if Poetry & Medicine is always such a good combination, but it certainly seems that Charity Hospital deserves as many words of tribute as possible.”  Here are wonderful words for a place that taught and inspired so many of our doctors for 270 years.

Charity Hospital, New Orleans
1735-2005

Generations climbed her stone steps,
disappeared for years inside gray walls,
learned to live thirty-six-hour days
and then to sleep without dreams.
We passed through admit rooms,
studied gunshot wounds and abdominal pain,
absorbed impermanence and accepted death.
We walked the deep night wards,
silent save for an occasional moan,
listened for the absence of breath.
We emerged changed ”
not more compassionate perhaps,
but calmer, sadder, more resigned.
From those years much was lost,
lives and stories forever gone.
Our hands remember though
how to wield a knife,
separate good tissue from bad,
preserve vessel and nerve
and something more ”
how to touch a dying patient
whisper a wordless benediction
and receive a blessing in return.

Wayne F. Larrabee, Jr, MD
Seattle, WA
JAMA 2006 295:1224.