Complete Physical

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Overview

Complete Physical will appeal to physicians and patients alike, which includes most of the multitude. Doctors can read the book and sympathize with its complaints; patients can read it and know the mind of their doctor better.

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More About This Book

Overview

Complete Physical will appeal to physicians and patients alike, which includes most of the multitude. Doctors can read the book and sympathize with its complaints; patients can read it and know the mind of their doctor better.

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Editorial Reviews

Erin Advocate

'The book shines a light on the amazing resilience of humans, on unrealistic expectations placed on doctors, on the emotional trauma of treating untreatable pain, on regrets for past errors, on impersonal technology, and on pessimism in the professions.... It is heavy stuff, but achieves much more than therapy for the writer. In its fearless contemplation of pain and death, Complete Physical celebrates the pervasive beauty and power of love.'

— Phil Gravelle

Telegraph-Journal

'In New Brunswick-born Shane Neilson's latest poems, the doctor continues to find inspiration in medicine. His verse is clinical and carefully executed, like surgery. It's a pulse beating in step with the cold, old anatomy diagrams dissecting the body. But what Neilson cuts into here isn't diagramed flesh and bone, but his own heart yearning for love in a life surrounded by death and sickness.... His only prescription? Love.'

Tangerine Tree Review

'If Complete Physical comes across as a little uneven it is perhaps because it's like a Doctor Who version of an old-fashioned black medical bag, bigger on the inside than on the outside, a catch all for whatever the doctor thinks might come in useful, holding everything from a thermometer to an MRI machine. A rummage through it is likely to turn up just the thing you need to help you think about the issue at hand. "I am priestly," the doctor tells us, in "Curing Blindness," "leveraging hope and faith and that grand panacea, love, against death. . . What I tell you is like connecting dots: there are points of light, and if you cannot see them, I will heal your blindness." '

— Sheila Smith

Midwest Book Review

When your calling is preserving life, you come with a few unique ways to analyze the matter. Complete Physical is a collection of poetry from Shane Neilson, reflecting on his profession as a physician and his entanglements with love and death. Complete Physical is an intriguing collection, and a recommended one.

— James Cox

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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780889843257
  • Publisher: Porcupine's Quill, Incorporated
  • Publication date: 6/1/2010
  • Edition description: First
  • Edition number: 1
  • Pages: 64
  • Product dimensions: 5.40 (w) x 8.60 (h) x 0.40 (d)

Meet the Author

Shane Neilson is a family physician who published his first book of poems with Frog Hollow Press in 2008 called Exterminate My Heart. He will publish Meniscus with Biblioasis in 2009, and Alice and George in 2011 with Goose Lane Editions. He also published a memoir about his training as a physician called Call Me Doctor. All of his writings show fealty to his origins in rural New Brunswick. He has also been anthologized in The New Canon (Signature, 2005) and In Fine Form (Polestar, 2005.) Neilson has edited Alden Nowlan and Illness, a book collecting together all of Alden Nowlan's medical poems, and he has just finished work on another anthology about what lies behind poetry called Approaches To Poetry, a book collecting together twenty-seven poets who write about what moves them. It will be published by Frog Hollow late in 2009.

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Read an Excerpt

On Conducting Complete Physicals

If love were a diagnosis,
I would chase it in a field of MRI machines gone all blinky from delirium,
magnets gone randy.
If the insurance form said, Check all that apply:
Love, Lovesickness, Jealousy, Possessiveness,
all of it would be insurable in bouquets and chocolates.

If love were my diagnostic quarry I'd hunt it like Cupid,
readying my quiver: Have you ever been in love?

With a Yes answer there would be a ritual cigar;
with No, a glass of bourbon.

It seems to me a more pertinent question than the latest burp or cough.
But if there was a diagnosis,
and it was love,
would I order an unlovely blood test to confirm, would I measure love's telltale bump with my hands, remarking on colour, border, size,
and consistency?

There would have to be a treatment for love.
What would it be?

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Table of Contents

Part One: White Coat

Standard Advice 11

The Doctor Readies the Breathing Tube 12

The Death of Leo Emberson, November 2006 13

The Death of Josie 15

Abscond 16

Terminus 17

Pain 18

Campanology 19

Curing Blindness 20

Ten Thoughts before the Stroke 21

Before (Doctor Monologue) 22

After (Patient Monologue) 23

On Diagnosing Alzheimer's Dementia 24

Old Anatomy Textbooks 25

Prescription Pad 26

On Conducting Complete Physicals 27

Testing 1, 2, 3 28

The Test 30

Inside the Examining Room 31

Love Squawks through Technology 32

Christ Child in the Incubator 34

The Missed Appointment 36

On-Call Song: To My Wife 37

Reading Electrocardiograms 38

Love Poem for the Doctor's Wife 39

Love Poem for the Doctor's Wife Revisited 40

The Heart Is Statutory 41

Ode to Stealth 42

Part Two: Black Bag

Song of the Most Responsible Physician 45

All Pain Can Be Controlled 47

Dr Grinch 48

Fairygodmother, MD 49

The Doctor Will See You Now 50

Secrets My Stethoscope Told Me 51

The Dugouts of Misery 52

No Ill Effects 53

Why We Suffer: A Conversation 54

My Illness 55

My Illness, Revisited 56

Taking Charts Home after Work 57

The Law of Gravity 58

Reading H.L. Mencken 59

How Doctors Think 60

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Reading Group Guide

1. What are the different roles of doctors according to Neilson's Complete Physical? Does the collection challenge or alter your understanding of a doctor's primary role or project in a community?

2. Why is death such a prevalent topic for poetry? How does Complete Physical use the language of poetry to grapple with the topic? Consider 'Campanology' or 'Prescription Pad', as well as Shane Neilson's interview with the Tangerine Tree Review here.

3. How does Complete Physical respond to the question of what it means to be ill?

4. Why does Neilson use different literary forms? Examine specific poems. Can or does language impose order on chaotic events like sickness or mortality? Is the attempt to find order through language a worthwhile project?

5. In 'Curing Blindness', the narrator writes of leveraging hope, faith and love against death. Is the opposition between hope, faith and love against death one that Neilson himself believes in? Are a doctor and his patients always working against death? Does Complete Physical present this battle in a hopeful or despairing light?

6. Consider the use and implications of the word 'matter' and the science of physics in Complete Physical.

7. Do you think that poets and doctors share a similar role in their community? Why or why not? Consider 'On Diagnosing Alzheimer's Dementia'.

8. Why did Neilson name the collection Complete Physical? Does the collection suggest that humans are completely physical?

9. How are illnesses defined or described in the collection? How does Neilson challenge or play with the concept of illness and cures? The last two lines of 'Inside the Examining Room' may offer a good starting point for this discussion.

9. What role does -- or should -- religion play in medical science? How does it figure in Complete Physical?

10. Love seems the most predominant theme in Complete Physical; Phil Gravelle of the Erin Advocate writes that 'Complete Physical celebrates the pervasive beauty and power of love.' Do you agree? Why is Neilson so preoccupied with love? How does love, an immaterial emotion, play such a powerful role in the workings of the body? (Or is love an immaterial emotion?)

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