Poetry, Medicine, And The Body’s Secrets

Both poetry and medicine are concerned with keeping and, when necessary, sharing confidences. Medicine adopts the sternest stance regarding what is termed protected health information, with numerous regulations (such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act [HIPAA]) explicitly directing how patients’ medical records must be safeguarded. Of all medical conditions, infertility is among those for which treatment unfolds under especially strict conditions of both medical and social concealment. The insistence on patients’ privacy is also expressed in the poem “One Day I Will Tell You,” in which a litany of withheld information—“[a] vial of seed tucked inside my shirt,” hidden injections, undeclared hope, silent miscarriage, and even an unspoken Holocaust survival story—is shared, however piecemeal, accumulating to an important, more nuanced question about when and why such details may be aired. Thus poetry, rather than enforcing some absolute nondisclosure policy, becomes instead a crucial means for navigating the personal vs public. “It was my secret, even when Grandma Helen died,” the speaker declares, thereby joining the possibility of new life with the loss of another and marking a point, perhaps, when such secrets may be told. The title of the poem itself seems to yearn for the moment when hope can transcend fear, whether it be the fear of failure, exposure, or death. The poem’s conclusion, when that day has arrived, is a liberating reminder, combining truths seemingly at odds as only poetry can, of why medicine must always protect patients’ health information: so it remains only in their power to choose whether to disclose it.