We spoke on an earlier show about insensible losses, a medical term for things like water vapor that your body loses but you don’t sense it. That inspired a Sacramento, California, listener to write a poem with that title about great artists who go underappreciated. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Poem on Insensible Losses”
A couple of weeks ago, we talked about the term insensible losses.
This is a medical term that has to do with things that you lose from your body.
For example, the vapor that comes out of your mouth all the time, but you don’t really see it until the air is cold, right?
You have to be careful about your insensible losses if you’re, for example, hiking at high altitude.
And I was saying I wish somebody would write a poem about insensible losses because it seems like such a wonderful metaphor.
Well, we got a few.
Oh, yes.
I saw a couple of genius things in the inbox.
Yes.
Yes.
We got one from Aaron Harmon in Sacramento.
And he writes, I’m not in any way, shape, or form a poet, but your comment that there should be a poem about insensible losses tickled me and made me think about artists who were unappreciated during their lives and found creative output reduced because of it.
And he says he came up with this poem during a break at work.
He works as an accounting tech by day.
So here’s his poem, Insensible Losses.
Through time, great art, from hands unknown, unseen before the artist, dead.
From hands no more that write or rhyme.
At last these works post-mortem read.
Ooh.
I like that.
And what is his name?
That’s Aaron Harmon in Sacramento.
Aaron Bravo.
Nice, right?
Oh, that was one of the things I saw in the inbox.
Yeah.
That is really nice.
Really nice.
Well done.
Here’s to the artists who are working without the recognition they deserve.
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I am a retired physician. In general, the use of insensible losses in medicine does not refer to the patient’s “inability to sense” the loss (usually water), but rather to our inability to measure that loss. When we measure a patient’s daily (24 hour) I&O (input and output), and they are exactly equal, we would expect the patient’s weight to actually fall a small amount … this is explained by the patient’s “insensible losses,” mostly in the form of water loss from our respiratory system as we exhale, and evaporation of water from the skin.