Sunday, May 02, 2010

ALT

Tired All The Time since returning from Afghanistan
Running late because of a codebase error

Difficulty expressing myself in English
Difficulty understanding his English

Walking away clutching a form for some blood tests
Baseline bloods should reveal anything serious

Reading a letter from my doctor. In English.
A raised ALT and γGT – come and see me at your earliest convenience

Walking away clutching a form for more blood tests
I didn’t realise he’d lost his son

Another letter from my doctor. In English.
Have you ever used drugs? Any tattoos?

I can’t believe I’m crying
I can’t believe he’s dying

By Tauseef Mehrali
Top 300 entries for the 2010 International Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine

5 comments:

tc said...

Vah!

Zuhair Mehrali said...

Really nice poem! Any idea when the results will be out?

Leo_Africanus said...

Thanks Zuhair. This poem came in the top 300 (out of 1700 entries).

Zuhair Mehrali said...

That's really good MashaAllah!

x said...

Very good doctor saab, next to you, I feel so one-dimensional!

Came acoss a lovely WordPress blog theme you might like, it's by Khoi Vinh (he did the redesign of the NY Times website) and is one of the foremost web designers in the world.

He did it on a grid structure that works really well, check it out: http://basicmaths.subtraction.com/

Catch up soon
S.>