Cell 2 Soul: The Humane Health Care Blog

October Poem

By Shirley Adelman


October, when breast cancer
testimonials almost outnumber
Pharma ads. Survivors thanking
hospitals and medical staff for
today when tomorrow seemed
as improbable as breast cancer
yesterday.  Now, twenty-three
remembering the struggle,
to struggle on:

 

An adjunct rushing from treatment
to college to college until my body
gave out.
Walking from the sofa
                            to the kitchen,
a destination
                         I struggled to reach.

 

A Department Head argued,
I should have known
I had breast cancer before
starting the semester.
In the future, when the future
seemed as illusive as an income,
he threatened to give me
a midnight schedule at the Navy Yard,
a distant satellite campus.

 

He came close to fulfilling
his threat by giving me
evening classes in a tough
neighborhood where, waiting
for public transportation meant
risking a mugging.

 

Cruelty leaves scars deeper
than surgery, more lethal
than invasive breast cancer,
and so I cry.

 

I wonder: What is the average
lifespan of an adjunct working
from paycheck to paycheck,
dependent upon department
heads who teach the humanities,
but lack heart. 

 

Previously published in "Blue Collar Review," Fall 2016, pp.29-30

Empathy: A poem

By Shirley Adelman

 

My daughter suffers
for another's suffering.
Shadows of eyebrows
on a mother,
with more tumors
than fingers can count.

Her daughter,
ashamed of suffering,
confides only in mine,
knowing
    I was lucky.
Cancer left me   left me

with a scarred breast:
tattooed dots,
a frame to radiation,
beamed
so early in the morning,
birds sang their thanks,
for another day.

Previously published in: "Canadian Woman Studies," Women and Cancer, A York University Publication, Spring/Summer 2010, (Volume 28, Numbers 2,3 ) p.29.

The author writes: “When my children were in their teens, I was diagnosed and treated for breast cancer, which greatly impacted upon them.  Years later, my daughter became the confidant of a colleague whose mother had late stage cancer.   The young woman was ashamed of her feelings, yet was able to share her suffering with my daughter, knowing I had been treated for breast cancer.  She did not know that my daughter's enormous capacity for empathy was provoked by the feelings of suffering she felt when I had cancer.  It was heartbreaking to see her so distressed.”