photo by Stu Rosner 

“Medical school did not prepare me for one of my first patient’s chief complaint: ‘my soul hurts,’ she said.”

So began Dr. Rafael Campo’s TEDx Cambridge talk in June of 2019.

Dr. Campo’s patient also told him about her physical pain. With the country deep in the thick of the opioid crisis, he did not prescribe the pain meds she had come for.

“I didn’t know what to prescribe for ‘my soul hurts’… I asked Joanie to tell me more. She paused and said no one had ever asked her about her deeper pain…”

For her next appointment, Joanie brought a guitar and – sobbing, played a song she had written about that deeper pain. He explains:

As I felt my heart open, I witnessed that when pain takes our breath away, poetry resuscitates us. Poetry seemed to heal. Her song proved that poetry could break down barriers between beleaguered doctors and stigmatized patients. Poetry sparks empathy, and empathy is essential for our survival… without empathy, how would we heal?

Scientific studies show that breathing and heart rate synchronize much like in mediation when we hear rhythmic language and recite poetry… Feeling becomes meaning. Poetry can heal. Or, as the great thirteenth-century poet Rumi put it, ‘the wound is the place where the light enters you…’

In modern medicine we focus on curing, but neglect healing. When there isn’t another procedure to perform, or cycle of chemo to infuse, too often we abandon the sick, leaving them to the social worker, or hospice volunteer, or alone.

As our medical knowledge expands, doctor’s checklists grow longer, and our time with each patient shrinks. This distancing causes stress, soon followed by burnout. No wonder our patients feel unheard. We’ve all been robbed of our empathy and compassion.

But poetry restores us to an awareness of the beating of our hearts, and the ebb and flow of our breathing, locating us in our human bodies. We’re no longer shielded by our white coats, nor drowned out by the endless bleeping and buzzing of our machines.

For all you scientists out there who crave randomized controlled trials, I get it. I’m a scientist too. Know that, in fact, there’s emerging research that bears out how teaching poetry to medical students helps them listen better, preserves empathy, and improves patient’s perceptions of the quality of their care. And cancer patients who read poetry together report decreased pain and can overcome depression…

I was taught – and once believed – that the hard facts of science and the unfeeling gleam of technology were all we needed to solve the problem of human suffering, and that poetry was merely a curious diversion. Of course, we must always strive to advance scientific knowledge… yet let us admit that science doesn’t have all the answers, and see that the most innovative science is born of the same unorthodox thinking that inspires poetic expression.

I’m a physician, and a poet. Together with like-minded colleagues, who have forged a new discipline called the medical humanities, I’ve brought poetry to medicine. Or perhaps I’ve just recognized what has always been present in the art of healing.

Inevitably, each of us becomes a patient. When it is your turn, our turn, know that our voices matter. We need and fear what we can’t explain. But instead, meet illness with empathy and let the light enter us. Because, in the end, it’s our poetry that heals. It’s our poetry that keeps us alive… the way each one deserves to be imagined; if not restored to health, then brought to life.

Dr. Campo practices and teaches medicine in Boston, at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He is Director of Literature and Writing Programs of the Arts and Humanities Initiative at Harvard Medical School, and Poetry Section editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

He is also author of nine books including Alternative Medicine, which includes this poem, “Iatrogenic:”

You say, “I do this to myself.” Outside,

my other patients wait. Maybe snow falls;

we’re all just waiting for our deaths to come,

we’re all just hoping it won’t hurt too much.

You say, “It makes it seem less lonely here.”

I study them, as if the deep red cuts

were only wounds, as if they didn’t hurt

so much. The way you hold your upturned arms,

the cuts seem aimed at your unshaven face.

Outside, my other patients wait their turns.

I run gloved fingertips along their course,

as if I could touch pain itself, as if

by touching pain I might alleviate

my own despair. You say, “It’s snowing, Doc.”

The snow, instead of howling, soundlessly

comes down. I think you think it’s beautiful;

I say, “This isn’t all about the snow,

is it?” The way you hold your upturned arms,

I think about embracing you, but don’t.

I think, “We do this to ourselves.” I think

the falling snow explains itself to us,

blinding, faceless, and so deeply wounding.

Learn more about Dr. Rafael Campo at his website

Curated by The Circle’s creative director & editor Lara Herscovitch (Cohort 10). To reach out to Lara directly: thecircle@clpnewhaven.org

print