• Lesser Home
• 'The Art of Learning Medicine' collection
• 'An Artist in the University Medical Center' collection
• Other works of art
•     '21 Years with Cystic Fibrosis'
•     '100 to a Bottle'
•     '780 Children Have Lunch Within the Hour'
•     'Bronchoscopy'
•     'Case Discussion Before Making Rounds'
•     'The Elderly'
•     'Enzyme Replacement'
•     'Laser Procedure to Prevent Blindness'
•     'Magnetic Resonance Imaging, 3-D'
•     'MRI Film of an AIDS Patient'
•     'Nothing Will Ever Happen to Them'
•     'Not One Millimeter Off'
•     'One Out of Nine'
•     'Pediatric Nephrology Conference'
•     'Peptide Synthesization'
•     'Strategy for Radiation'
•     'Teaching Rounds at Charity'
•     'They Just Melted Away'
•     'Therapeutical Apheresis
•     'Waiting for a New Heart'
•     'World Wide Dissemination of Medical Knowledge'

'Waiting for a New Heart'
(ink drawing with tempera, 21' x 29')
©May H. Lesser

The nurse in the premature intensive care unit says, "I would say that hope is the main ingredient, for the parent and for the whole family. Here are the real sick ones. A baby is being scheduled for surgery to replace some valves in the heart that go the wrong way. The baby in the back is being operated on this afternoon for something the matter with his intestines." It is a very quiet sick room. The neonatologist has rounds with her medical students and interns, going from one isolette to another. The baby in the drawing is now 26 weeks old. The twin brother, on the right, weighs even less and is hydrocephalic and has a shunt. The nurse wonders, "How can the mother, with three older children, take care of this baby even if he could get up to five pounds here?" His scrawny legs jerks in spasm, his arms protrude from the edge of the towel, even the miniscule perfect fingers and toes taped, wired, and covered, proclaim that he, too, is a human being.