If Dr. Seuss Were My Doctor

Kayla Simms
University of Ottawa
Class of 2016

Upon being accepted to medical school in 2012, I received a special edition of “Oh, the Places You’ll Go” from a personal mentor; reminding me to not just look ahead, but to remember and cherish the distant memories that shape who we are. I recently stumbled upon this memorabilia when I returned home over the March Break, and sat down to write this poem.

This poem is a testament to the physician’s inner-child and the ‘art’ of medicine.

If Dr. Seuss Were My Doctor

If Dr. Seuss were my doctor
Oh, what a script he would write
Surely more than a drug
Or some metabolite

He would tell me to wonder
To marvel and pause
To feel good about “me”
With a round of applause

“Look where you are
My, how far you have grown
From tying your shoes
To a big student loan”

He would look in my ears
Say “stick out your tongue”
He would stretch my extensors
Examine each lung

He’d use words like “Glarbish”
And “Sniffer” and “Bluck”
And “Puffly” and “Huffly”
And “Flomber McRuck”

His office would be covered
In posters galore
Of cats and green eggs
The tales we adore

His Nurse would be Thing
Not One nor not Two
But the Third of its kind
And would be just as blue

“The doctor is in!
He lives in your heart
Everyone is a healer
You can all play the part”

Dr. Seuss is my doctor
Yes, surely he’s me
The child I was
The doctor I’ll be

He’s more than a story
Or a book or a rhyme
He’s my childhood self
And a healer, with time

Dr. Seuss is my doctor
He’s the doctor within
Oh, the places you’ll go
When the doctor is in!