Cancer Stories: The Art Of Oncology

Listen to ASCO’s Journal of Clinical Oncology Art of Oncology poem, "The First Hero” by Christopher Kim, who is a research assistant at Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at Stanford University. The poem is followed by an interview with Kim and host Dr. Mikkael Sekeres. Kim reflects on his post-surgery sonnet. TRANSCRIPT Narrator: The First Hero, by Christopher Kim, BS  When he is like this—eyes closed, face still— he is unfamiliar. He wears a face younger than usual; fragile limbs washed in fluorescent light, eyes blurred with a diagnosis or ripe hyacinths or the last words we shared. Be good, son. Be bright. When he is still, anesthetized into memory, so too are the aphids in the garden. Lines of buzzing bodies descended from flight but clustered in quiet surrender. Fathers of sons who are trying to heal, who are failing, who retreat into the silence of sterile rooms. A heartbeat stutters and everything sings. Like the birds we watch outside the ICU window: how they peck at unyieldi