End Notes
Treatment Number Five
of electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) for depression
By Mina Le, M.D.
The body on the bed jumped taut
And clenched from fist to teeth, strung out
On current while we rearranged
His worn-down ruts of dreary thought.
Escape at last had taken this route:
To lie, in hopes of waking changed,
Enchanted to jerk like a marionette
From where the gel in his white hair
Conducted a hundred sixty volts,
With only this to forestall regret:
Either faith the doctors wouldn’t err,
Or else indifference to results.
Mina Le is chief resident in the department of otolaryngology at the University of Minnesota.