Kristy Wendt
School of Medicine and Public Health, Department of Surgery-Otolaryngology
2022
Poem
For two and a half centuries
the prognosis for esophageal atresia
was death by aspiration
until a cold day
in the last week of winter,
when a listless infant,
twelve days old,
mouth bleeding,
was referred to Cameron Haight,
There wasn’t much hope.
in her stillness,
he saw semblance to all the
children he had operated on
with her condition,
four failures,
and all the failures before her.
He thought to wait.
His nurses knew the work of resuscitation,
the doing of it,
the shoring up,
the administration of sulfa drugs
which was all they had at the time
Soon enough, her breath was steady,
her eyes bright,
and he operated.
Incision, closure.
End-to-end
Two and a half centuries of death,
but on this day
the end of winter finally came
for the procedure of waiting.