← Previous Post: | Next Post:

 

UD has been spending her days in the lunar module…

… of a state of the art brain surgery recovery ICU room – one of her relatives is there. That’s why she took the train up to Boston — to drive each morning through dreary streets to one of the world’s great medical centers and sit quietly while someone she loves tries to pull herself together after a surgeon removed a benign tumor. (The surgeon’s name – Ekkehard – means brave sword…) The room seems to totter under the weight of its technology, much of which, in the form of tubes and drains and cuffs, covers the patient’s body.

Intensivists is the name for the doctors who treat ICU patients, and UD likes this word, thinks it should title a poem about something. Those who deal in the intensities. Specialists in over the top events.

The drama is conducted quietly; technology also means the end of the old hospital of pings and pages – the occasional “code” announcement sounds, but the hallways are subdued, courteous, featuring many lobbies furnished with deep couches and soft lights.

UD, a fictivist, has long said of herself I can handle anything except reality. Poems, novels – these sidlings up to reality have been her vocation.

Yet it is also true that Mama Reality seems unable to leave her unmolested. UD is doing her best with it.

Margaret Soltan, February 24, 2016 9:07AM
Posted in: snapshots from home

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=51237

6 Responses to “UD has been spending her days in the lunar module…”

  1. AYY Says:

    I wish your relative a speedy recovery.

  2. adam Says:

    Your kindness is commendable. Bless you, UD.

  3. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Many thanks, adam and AYY.

  4. dmf Says:

    always strikes me the contrast between our sanitized engineer ordered high-tech medical facilities and the raw flailing messy emotions that we often find there, good to make some space for the alltoohuman as we can under such circumstances, peace to all involved UD.
    you might find some value in the works of my late and still dear friend Jessie Gruman.
    http://www.cfah.org/jessie-gruman/

  5. Pete Says:

    Best wishes to you and yours

  6. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Thank you, Pete and dmf.

Comment on this Entry

UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte

Archives

Categories