by ALIXEN PHAM
Our last featured author from GATHERING: A Women Who Submit Anthology, is Alixen Pham. Her poem, “How I Respond to a Health Care Survey” is a call and response to life and death and how between the answers we provide to the questions asked in the most tender moments. To hold Alixen’s poem in your hands and all of the work featured this past month, order your copy of GATHERING here.
How I Respond to a Health Care Survey
by ALIXEN PHAM
after Solmaz Sharif
IN THE LAST SIX MONTHS how often have you seen your
PROVIDER? The one who charges me $300 for
CHECK-UP and SPECIALIZED CARE about my health, but never
ADVICE about what to do when my mother was dying. Instead asking:
HOW MANY DAYS DID YOU USUALLY HAVE TO WAIT for her body to shut down?
MEDICAL QUESTIONS needed to be asked
DURING REGULAR OFFICE HOURS as I waited in darkness for the sun’s
FOLLOW UP to give me death’s time table. Would it squeeze my mother in:
SAME DAY
1 DAY
2-3 DAYS
4-7 DAYS
8-14 DAYS
15-30 DAYS
MORE THAN 30 DAYS. At which point, who do I call? Who would
EXPLAIN THINGS IN A WAY THAT WAS EASY TO UNDERSTAND? Who would
LISTEN CAREFULLY TO me cry, Don’t go, I’m sorry, even as the
BLOOD TEST, X-RAY OR OTHER TEST alerted the machines to order the casket.
CUSTOMER SERVICE STAFF gave me End-of-Care forms to sign, as if giving
WORST POSSIBLE – BEST POSSIBLE ratings about ways to die from, or survive the trauma of losing limbs, hair and organs, or loved ones could be reduced into sensible ways to
MANAGE YOUR CARE the way my mother used to manage her kitchen, treating knives, meats and vegetables with
COURTESY AND RESPECT. The neighbors and entire church praised her fried eggrolls, fried rice and shrimp & cabbage salad. Never noticed me cooking by her side. Mom’s mini-me. I realized years later, she was my Institute Le Cordon Bleu, the Michelin in my star.
HOW WOULD YOU RATE YOUR OVERALL MENTAL OR EMOTIONAL HEALTH during this time? The choices are:
EXCELLENT
VERY GOOD
GOOD
FAIR
POOR—which surely can’t be the lowest option, considering death is obliviously worse than poor. Where are their Bedside Manners? Didn’t they learn Level 101 in school? Instead, they ask me:
WHAT IS THE HIGHEST GRADE OR LEVEL OF EDUCATION THAT YOU HAVE COMPLETED? As if heaven is partitioned by high school, college, some college, graduate, PhD or Other degrees. How did anyone get in pre-language? Pre-civilizations? Pre-everything?
WHAT IS YOUR RACE (MARK ONE OR MORE), as if skin color was a factor in doling out empathy and morphine. It seemed they had failed to grasp the compassion of death when it asked:
DID SOMEONE HELP YOU COMPLETE your mother’s dying?
YES, I ended her suffering. Turned off her oxygen. Upped her painkiller. Watched her last breath take I love you beyond my reach.
Alixen Pham is published with The Slowdown, New York Quarterly, Salamander, Gyroscope Review, DiaCRITICS, Soul-Lit, and Brooklyn Poets as Poet of the Week. She has been nominated for Best of the Net Anthology 2020-2021. She leads the Westside Los Angeles chapter of Women Who Submit, a volunteer-run literary organization supporting and nurturing women and non-binary writers. She is the recipient of Brooklyn Poets Fellowship, the Association of Writers and Writing Programs’ Writer-to-Writer Mentorship Program and PEN Center / City of West Hollywood Writing Craft Scholarship in Fiction and Nonfiction. She fusion bakes between writing poetry, fiction and nonfiction work.