To My Surgeon
No-one else sees me
drowning in the white wave
sprinkled with a terrible salt
invasive lobular carcinoma
is difficult to identify
but you take one look
and I am
held
by your hand
saving my life
About this poem
To celebrate the Quincentenary of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, twenty-one Scottish poets were commissioned by the Scottish Poetry Library to write poems inspired by the College’s collections and work. Like surgeons they have used ‘the hand that sees’, but in this case the writing hand that acts at the prompting of insight and imagination. The poems and their comments, alongside photographs of items that inspired them, were published in The Hand that Sees: Poems for the quincentenary of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, edited by Stewart Conn, and published by the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in association with the Scottish Poetry Library in 2005. This poem is also included in the anthology Tools of the Trade: Poems for New Doctors, first and second editions (Scottish Poetry Library, 2014 & 2016).
Author’s note:
This poem was sparked by one exhibit: the jar containing a mounted specimen of invasive lobular carcinoma. I was reluctant to look at it, but curious at the same time. The poem says what it feels like to be the patient who realises that mammogram and biopsy have missed the cancer and that it has gone undetected for a long time. I owe my life to a surgeon who was sharp-eyed and persistent enough to diagnose this particular cancer.
