Compassion

  Sentence

   I know what it's like

  to serve time under

  a sentence without 

    possibility of parole.

       To be given a diagnosis

  by a man in a white

  coat sitting high and

  mighty on his stool.

    No empathy in the 

sentencing, just

             You have broken the law

       of normal, you have

        such-and-such disease.

  Period.  A sentence

       and nothing more.  No

     semicolon.  No dash.

Would it kill him

       to be a bit more open-

         ended, to say I'm sorry,

  to touch my hand?

Adam Possner, MD

      JAMA, August 15, 2012