Here is a non-poetic ode to medical researchers and practitioners. Without their work I would likely be a blind, toothless, crippled old crone…if I had survived to adulthood at all.
I grew up in the country before fluoride in municipal water. I’ve seen the difference that has made by the difference between my teeth and my children and grandchildren’s teeth. I didn’t have a dpt shot as a child and ended up with whooping cough. It was not pleasant. My classmates and I passed around measles, mumps, chickenpox and more. The swimming pools were often closed by polio outbreaks. We were the generation just ahead of Salk and Sabin’s work. We are the survivors.
I bless all who developed eyeglasses, tests of pressure in the eye. Without their work my parents and I would have had increasing glaucoma. Because of the drops available to me, the glaucoma was passed down to me but not its destructive results.
Before I write here again, I will have a total knee replacement to correct for the lack of cartilage in my left knee and osteoarthritis, stemming from a congenital malformation, slight though it was, that afflicted my grandmother my father and a cousin. Nobody even noticed the slight scoliosis that was probably the origin of our misalignment. As for our much earlier ancestors, they probably didn’t live long enough to develop the results in old age.
I am, of course, not looking forward to the pain I am promised from the surgery, but I am eagerly awaiting the knee, finally aligned as it should be, and the ability to run again. I even feel joy at the knowledge I can then walk up and down stairs pain free.
I’ll see you on the other side. Maybe then I can manage a poetic ode.
The Connecticut Writers' Circle 