Jeff McCallum

I have, until the moment of this writing, failed to understand the meaning and value of “an open letter.”

Occasionally I have been inspired by one, such as Dr. Howard Spiro’s open letter to a fellow physician on age and retirement in the Yale Journal of Humanities and Medicine and the interchange which followed. I must confess I am eagerly awaiting the release of Richard Selzer’s collection of letters, which once published will of course be open; however following my second week- long experience at Dr. Davis Watts’ Writing the Medical workshop I am moved to write, to loudly exclaim both my personal thanks and my wish to urge others to attend this week of magical freedom. Oh, I realize there are many, many workshops available, some great, some good, some, well let’s just say some an experience. This focused workshop is a gathering of love and support such as one wishes to see at every hospital bedside. There is a balanced mix of nurses, technicians, physicians and patients all working with mutual love and respect toward a common goal, the improvement of the children that are the issue of every writer, nurturing them to health, allowing them to pass through the birth canal with or without the pain which accompanies new birth and emerge into the light of realization. The faculty, from icons such as Selzer, Coulehan and now Campo and Davis, poetry therapist John Fox, to poets and prose writers less or not at all involved in the medical aspect of their work, are fully engaged and masters of their craft, the participants come prepared to work and to learn from those who would, in loving kindness, facilitate creation of new life.

Would that we could create this environment on every corner where health care and patient meet.

Doctor to Student

for Dr. Howard Spiro

“People may think you are irrelevant, but as long as you are convinced that you are not, you have something to say to them…” from an open letter to Herbert Kaufman

25 January 2004 Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine

There is much good to be said for the view point of the old

We no longer fear death

nor are we greedy for more days on this earth

We have learned that time and nature heal many wounds

We no longer fear death

We can act as mediators between the machines and the soul

We have learned that time and nature heal many wounds

that care is care and not always cure

We can act as mediators between the machines and the soul

We have practiced long enough to know

that care is care and not always cure

We who have experience now have the leisure of contemplation

We have practiced long enough to know

the ICU may be a place for elderly physicians to speak with families

We who have experience now have the leisure of contemplation

Use your ear for truth

The ICU may be a place for elderly physicians to speak with families

Not in the same earnest frenzy as before

Use your ear for truth

Take the time to listen

Not in the same earnest frenzy as before

do not now so eagerly abandon what it took so long to learn

Take the time to listen

There is much good to be said for the view point of the old