Listen to ASCO's Journal of Clinical Oncology Art of Oncology poem, "Episteme" by Dr. Michael Slade, who is a medical oncologist at Washington University School of Medicine. The poem is followed by an interview with Slade and host Dr. Lidia Schapira. Dr Slade highlights the tension between what is known and unknown and what spoken and unspoken as physicians try to care for our patients without destroying their ability to live with their disease.

TRANSCRIPT

Narrator: Episteme, by Michael J. Slade, MD, MSCI 

I know you know, must know.

The tides have woken you

night after night after night,

borrowed blood flowing in

and now out, unaided

by your dwindling marrow.

You must know your story

is read and written

in a perfecta tense.

You must know the end

somewhere deep in

your empty bones.

 

Still, you speak of summers,

of fish caught or lost beneath

the calm surface of a distant lake.

"There's nothing to do

in December," you say,

skin pale in the cool light

leaking from the door.

It's late now, deep in the evening

and my knees ache as I nod

and wonder about a different world

where you were not you

and this was all decided months ago.

 

"Day by day," I mutter and shuffle

to my next door, leaving you alone

to wait on the cataclysm, on

that night when the blood

of strangers runs wild

and catches your breath,

that night in the ICU, where

they wait, tube in hand

as you sweat and shake, where

I still promise to care for

you knowing, knowing you

will never wake again.

Dr. Lidia Schapira: Hello and welcome to JCO's Cancer Stories, the Art of Oncology, which features essays and personal reflections from authors exploring their experience in the field of oncology. I'm your host, Dr. Lidia Schapira. I'm a Professor of Medicine at Stanford University. Today we are joined by Dr. Michael Slade, a Medical Oncologist at Washington University School of Medicine. In this episode, we will be discussing his Art of Oncology poem, "Episteme." 

Our guest's disclosures will be linked in the transcript. 

Mike, welcome to our podcast and thank you for joining us.

Dr. Michael Slade: Thank you, Lidia. It's great to be here.

Dr. Lidia Schapira: It's a pleasure to have you. Let's start by talking a little bit about your relationship to writing prose, poetry. Is this something that you've always done? Do you want to share with us a little bit about what it means to you and when you have time to write?

Dr. Michael Slade: I'd say, I have absolutely no formal training as a poet or honestly in anything else, but this is something I've done since college. And especially starting in medical school, this was really a deliberate practice for me to try to find a way to unload some of the harder experiences that we can go through as medical providers.

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