Interviews

Deirdre Neilen, PhD shares a selection from Upstate’s literary journal, “The Healing Muse” every Sunday on HealthLink on Air. She edits the annual publication featuring fiction, poetry, essays and visual art focused on themes of medicine, illness, disability and healing.

Order copies of “The Healing Muse” through the Center for Bioethics & Humanities.

If I Could Help, by Rae Spencer

I would, if I could
Tuck a yellow rose root
Between fall and summer
And call it winter
            With the understanding
            That it is alive
            And needs only dirt
            Water and sun
                        To sprout full into spring

I would, if it might help
Bring you a click-beetle
To leap from your hand
With a hard shell snap

Or teach your thumb wisdom
With which to recognize
Opossum and raccoon
From only their tracks in the mud

I could find the robin’s cup-nest
Three blue eggs rocking
And make you watch
As the eggs turn into chicks

Or show you a forest
Where bark peeled trees
Carry bear messages
In a thin stream of sap

You might find a velvet cuff
From the stag’s new antler
Or last year’s gnawed discard
Marked by the fox, the sly bone-eater

Come with me
I’ll show you these things
And dig a yellow rose root
To tuck into your hand
            We will name it winter
            And you will stay until spring
            To see it sprout
            To understand that it is alive
                        And so are you

__________________________________________________

Kokua, by KH Solomon

One calls it the territory no one wants to enter;
another the roller coaster no one wants to ride;

you the membership no one wants to hold
in the society no one wants to join.

No one? I’m one.
Not to be exiled from you,

not to travel apart, not to be relegated
to a company not yours—for this I would enlist

in the fellowship of the unwilling,
ride its unsteady transport over hostile terrain

wherever it goes.
Of course it’s irrational,

foolhardy. But this isn’t my head talking
or even my heart hoping. I only know

when they scoped up my inside, when they
carved on my outside looking for telltale signs

and reported, we found nothing; my head answered,
good; my heart replied fine; but something in me

took the news badly, hearing: passport denied;
ticket refused; this club is closed to your kind.

Dearest explorer, rider, member perforce,
I can try to explain:

Kokua means helper.
But in a far away place, in a long ago time,

it meant so much more. And something in me
says, I would go kokua for you, journey with you,

ride waves with you up and down to Kalaupapa

Upstate geriatrician Sharon Brangman, MD, discusses issues surrounding the use of feeding tubes for the end stage of dementia, and ongoing research that shows it may do more harm than good.

Upstate clinical nurse specialist Ann Hendrickson, RN, BSN, cares for medical/surgical, geriatrics, and oncology patients at Upstate.  She shares the results of a study she conducted for her masters capstone project at Upstate’s College of Nursing (CON), concluding that patients who get up out of bed and walk daily improved their recovery and decreased their length of hospital stay.  Hendrickson won second prize for her poster titled, ‘Developing and Implementing an Evidenced Based Nurse-Driven Mobility Protocol’, at the national conference of the National Association of Clinical Nurse Specialists. She is the first student at the CON to win this national award, and the protocol she developed is being adopted throughout the hospital.

Special guest Lloyd Sederer, MD, medical director of the NY State Office of Mental Health, talks about the ongoing challenges of families touched by mental illness, and his new book The Family Guide to Mental Health Care.   What’s Up At Upstate: How to recognize mental illness in a loved one

Upstate developmental pediatrician Nienka Dosa, MD, talks about a new guidebook written by dancers for dancers, using ballet therapy for children with cerebral palsy. She is joined by occupational therapist and ballet instructor Lisa Neville, OT, who is collaborating to put the program into practice at Jowonio preschool, with the help of Syracuse Nottingham high school dancer students.  View the guidebook: Ballet for Children with Cerebral Palsy
The Center for Development, Behavior, and Genetics at Upstate Golisano Children’s Hospital. 

To donate to the Madeline Cote Endowment, a fund to support pediatric patients with cerebral palsy and their families during treatment at Upstate Medical University, go to the Foundation for Upstate Medical University and search for ‘Cote’.  For more information: 315-464-7561.

Dr. Richard O’Neill shares his strategy for calming down, or ‘getting centered’, when the brain goes into overdrive and life feels out of control.

Watch Dr. O’Neill on YouTube!
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Check-up from the Neck Up Podcast Archives

Read more about The Institute for Decision Excellence & Leadership

Upstate’s Chair of Neurosurgery Lawrence Chin, MD talks about the diagnosis and treatment of trigeminal neuralgia (TN), a chronic pain condition that affects the trigeminal or 5th cranial nerve, one of the largest nerves in the head.  Learn more about the Upstate Gamma Knife Center.

Deirdre Neilen, PhD shares a selection from Upstate’s literary journal, “The Healing Muse” every Sunday on HealthLink on Air. She edits the annual publication featuring fiction, poetry, essays and visual art focused on themes of medicine, illness, disability and healing.

Order copies of “The Healing Muse” through the Center for Bioethics & Humanities.

Calling on Lula Mae, by Cynthia Carmichael

Lula Mae was a big woman
and fond of snuff.

The Maxwell House spittoon,
           an extension of her body,
accompanied her to the doctor.

Near the end, house calls were of necessity.
The doctor found it a challenge to locate her tiny abode
            at the edge of the Everglades,
where weeds and smelly skunk vine
swallow all in their domain.

Inside the walls seemed alive,
covered as they were
with funeral notices,

 those ancient photographs,
            those faces of the dead,
smiled out, carried on,
and kept Lula Mae in good company.

Those…and the cockroaches.
There must have been hundreds.

The doctor learned to perfect her technique—
three hard punches to the sofa
to send them scurrying
before sitting down to listen.

________________________________

I Don’t Know, by Cortney Davis

 When I drive home, will I walk through the door of joy
or into the raw edge of disappointment?

 I don’t know.

 Will my daughter’s bruises heal and her pain go away, burning off
like morning fog?

I don’t know.

I don’t know if I will keep my job or leave it;
I don’t know if I have the courage to change my life.

Does anyone know, after the pit of night,
what tomorrow will bring?

How can I serve, when all I do
is scurry after the thing-ness, the supposed-to’s
or the you-must’s of my life?

I don’t know.

For this day, my task is to give praise
for not knowing.

For this day,
my task is to give praise for not knowing.

Upstate University Hospital dietitian Terry Podolak, RD, our ‘Healthy Eats’ expert, offers lots of great tips for healthy summer grilling.    Read the story: Dietitians say summer grilling can offer healthy options in meat, produce
eatright.org 

Karen Teelin, MD, an Upstate Golisano Children’s Hospital pediatrician who specializes in adolescent medicine, talks about the ABCs of sexuality. According to a National Youth Risk Behavior Survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, efforts to combat the spread of teen pregnancy, HIV and other STDs among teenagers have stalled.  Read more about Upstate’s Pediatric and Adolescent Center
Watch Dr. Teelin’s interview with YNN.

Deirdre Neilen, PhD shares a selection from Upstate’s literary journal, ‘The Healing Muse‘ every Sunday on HealthLink on Air. She edits the annual publication featuring fiction, poetry, essays and visual art focused on themes of medicine, illness, disability and healing.

Order copies of ‘The Healing Muse’ through the Center for Bioethics & Humanities.

Excavating Grief, by Pamela Mitchell

Bruce
Eric
Bill
Peter
Rick
David
John
Justin

one long road
stopping here and here and here
pulling into driveways

little pockets of dementia
and Kaposi’s
and cyto megolo virus

blind

where no one knew
except nurses
shoving Subarus into
four-wheel drive
plowing driveways
with prayer

flipping open hatchbacks
revealing baskets
tools—
gauze absorbing dreaded
body fluids      
tape of paper   silk   plastic

securing gauze laying flat
or stretched round skinney
limbs   torso   head

we brought our children
and I know why

we said   daycare problems
we knew   babies’ laughter warmed
your hearts

Bruce
Eric
Peter
Rick
Bill
David
John
Justin

we knew you mothers
would not come

we came
dressed your wounds
listened to stories
held you
rocked you

while our babies
toddled ‘round
chasing your puppy

we knew you
loved our babies
Truth be known

we brought them
as angels we held
with one hand

while, you, angel
slipped
right out of the other

Upstate cardiologist Harold Smulyan, MD collaborated with a retired former colleague to investigate what killed Wizard of Oz author and Chittenango native L. Frank Baum in 1919. It was congestive heart failure. Their paper, which was recently published, explores what tools physicians had at their disposal to treat heart problems in the early 1900s, and what the thinking and beliefs were regarding heart disease at that time. Dr. Smulyan shares how he got involved in such a project, how he conducted research by sifting through Baum’s papers at Syracuse University’s Bird library, and what he discovered about medicine 100 years ago.