• 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'

'MRI Film of an AIDS Patient'
(ink drawing with tempera, 30' x 39')
©May H. Lesser

The neuroradiologist studies the MRI films of a 34-year-old man, an inpatient at the university medical center, whose AIDS virus has invaded his spinal cord and his brain. He advises the primary physician in his report to have a biopsy of the cerebellum. He turns to me, "It will take $300,000 to keep him alive for a year and who has $300,000?" He tells me that he, himself, is married and has a son, that the patient is from out-of-town, from San Francisco. I smile to myself, as if there are no such patients native to New Orleans. I notice that when the physician can do something for a patient, he seems to move closer to that patient. Here the reverse appears. In our recent past, before drugs, mental patients were kept away in hospitals out in the woods, and the caretakers distanced themselves from the patients. Today the young doctor kept his distance for emotional safety.