EP118: Gaudeamus Igitur!

= Therefore, let us rejoice! This is a poem by Dr. John Stone, and every time I read it, I am reminded of some of the essential parts of doctoring, both good and bad. It's graduation season (schools as well as training programs) - please share with your graduates, particularly those in healthcare. Dr. Benjamin Doolitle (who was on episode 97) shared this poem with me and my department at our recent annual departmental retreat. Somewhat related to EP117 and William Deresiewicz's concept of being an excellent sheep that has lost the power of creativity, this poem reminds me that it is a continuous striving (at least for me) to focus on the truly important things.

Transcript

Christine Ko: [00:00:00] Welcome back to SEE HEAR FEEL. Today. I'm going to do something a little bit different. Today, there's no guest that I'm going to be speaking with. My Department of Dermatology recently had a retreat. We had Dr. Benjamin Doolittle, who was on this podcast, and I can put a link to his episode in the show notes. He came and we read aloud, we read together in smaller groups, we read individually a poem by John Stone called Gaudeamus Igitur. I find this poem amazing. I will put the poem in the show notes as well. It's not the shortest poem, this one, but it's a beautiful poem. This poem was for the commencement address of a medical school. A lot of it is about patients, and cures, and medicines, and the heart, and how you can heal, and different pressures that might be on doctors. There's a lot of that in the poem, but I think this actually [00:01:00] really applies to anyone.

Gaudeamus Igitur by John Stone 

For this is the day of joy 

which has been fourteen hundred and sixty days in coming 

and fourteen hundred and fifty-nine nights 

For today in the breathing name of Brahms and the cat of Christopher Smart through the unbroken line of language 

and all the nouns stored in the angular gyrus 

today is a commencing

For this is the day you know too little against the day when you will know too much

For you will be invincible and vulnerable in the same breath which is the breath of your patients

For their breath is our breathing and our reason

For the patient will know the answer, and you will ask him, ask her

For the family may know the answer

For there may be no answer and you will know too little again or there will be an answer and you will know too much 

forever

For you will look smart and feel ignorant and the patient will not know which day it is for you and you will pretend to be smart [00:02:00] out of ignorance

For you must fear ignorance more than cyanosis

For whole days will move in the direction of rain

For you will cry and there will be no one to talk to or no one but yourself

For you will be lonely

For you will be alone

For there is a difference

For there is no seriousness like joy

For there is no joy like seriousness

For the days will run together in gallops and the years 

go by as fast as the speed of thought which is faster than the speed of light or Superman or Superwoman

For you will not be Superman 

For you will not be Superwoman

For you will not be Solomon but you will be asked the question, nevertheless

For after you learn what to do, how, and when to do it, the question will be whether

For there will be addictions: whiskey, tobacco, love

For they will be difficult to cure

For you yourself will pass the kidney stone of pain and be joyful

For this is the end of examinations

For this is the beginning of testing

For death will give the [00:03:00] final examination and everyone will pass

For the sun is always right on time and even that may be reason for a kind of joy 

For there are all kinds of all degrees of joy 

For love is the highest joy 

For which reason the best hospital is a house of joy even with rooms of pain and loss exits of misunderstanding 

For there is the mortar of faith 

For it helps to believe 

For Mozart can heal and no one knows where he is buried 

For penicillin can heal and the word and the knife 

For the placebo will work and you will think you know why 

For the placebo will have side effects and you will know you do not know why 

For none of these may heal 

For joy is nothing if not mysterious 

For your patients will test you for spleen and for the four humors

For they will know the answer

For they have the disease

For disease will peer up over the hedge of health with only its eyes [00:04:00] showing

For the T waves will be peaked and you will not know why

For there will be computers

For there will be hard data and they will be hard to understand

For the trivial will trap you and the important escape you

For the Committee will be unable to resolve the question

For there will be the arts and some will call them soft data whereas in fact they are the hard data by which our lives are lived

For everyone comes to the arts too late

For you can be trained to listen only for the oboe out of the whole orchestra

For you may need to strain to hear the voice of the patient in the thin reed of his crying

For you will learn to see most acutely out of the corner of your eye to hear best with your inner ear

For there are late signs and early signs

For the patient's story will come to you like hunger, like thirst

For you will know the answer like second nature, like first

For the patient will live and you will try to understand[00:05:00] 

For you will be amazed or the patient will not live and you will try to understand

For you will be baffled

For you will try to explain both, either, to the family 

For there will be laying on of hands and the letting go 

For love is what death would always intend if it had the choice 

For the fever will drop, the bone remold along its lines of force the speech return the mind remember itself 

For there will be days of joy 

For there will be elevators of elation and you will walk triumphantly in purest joy along the halls of the hospital and say Yes to all the dark corners where no one is listening 

For the heart will lead 

For the head will explain but the final common pathway is the heart whatever kingdom may come 

For what matters finally is how the human spirit is spent 

For this is the day of joy

For this is the morning to rejoice

For this is the beginning

Therefore, let us rejoice. [00:06:00] Gaudeaumus igitur.

Thank you for listening all the way to here. One thing we did during our retreat was choose our favorite line and talk about it with someone else. I would really love it if you share this episode with a close friend, whether a doctor or not. I hope that this poem touches you as much as it has me. Thank you for listening.