July 31, Thursday "Sick per joy"

First Words

      …thoughts of an anachronistic, solo pediatrician

                    by Glenn Feole, M.D.

        "Be careful too that the reading of your story makes the melancholy 

        laugh and the merry laugh louder," Cervantes, Prologue to Don Quixote

Contact: ishmaelish36@gmail.com

Blog site: ishmaelish36.blogspot.com

July 31, 2014 Thursday

Chief Complaint: (written on the chart before I go in the room)

     “sick per joy”  (Joy is the triage nurse)

Interesting Name:

     Zabian

Anecdote:

     Being in solo practice with my office in my home was wonderful.  My patients would go out of their way to respect my privacy but the occasional infringements did happen.  They are often funny and something that I actually treasure.  

      John's best friend and constant companion, Sean, is eleven years old also.  He and Sean are 'best buds' and they even once pleaded with us to see if Sean could sleep over...all week.  They ride bikes to school, play together after school, go to soccer practice, etc.  

     They had their arguments for the week long sleep-over all prepared for Tina.  However, Tina shocked them and just said, "Yes!  Of course,  That's a great idea."  They looked at each other in disbelief and suspicion for a few seconds and then started shouting happily and jumping up and down.  

A few days later, I didn't have to go to the hospital in the morning to see any newborns, so I was sleeping in after a long night that had the usual two or three nocturnal calls and  a visit or two to the office in the early a.m.  Both Sean and John suddenly appeared at my bedside at 7:15 a.m. before leaving for school, all wide-eyed and awake, pummeling me with 100 decibel questions.  

     Sean had a live tick sealed in a baggy that he thrust in front of my unfocused eyes as I lay in bed, asking for a professional opinion.  I was scrambling for my glasses when he also held up a red ulcerated lesion on his thigh, dangling it before my eyes, as he showed me the lesion as I lay there half-asleep, my hair shooting out in all directions.  I leaned up wearily on my elbow and mumbled some instructions for him to do to take care of that nasty lesion.  

     A few minutes later, I was delivered the portable home phone by John; it was Sean's Mom, a friend of ours, who had questions about various maladies that were afflicting him.  

     I could hear Sean and John rummaging in the office directly below my bedroom as they put some neosporin and a bandaid on his wound.  I then picked up the cell phone and called in some medicine at the pharmacy for Sean...and then pulled the covers over my head for a few more stolen moments of sleep on this cold October morning before getting up to start the day.  

      I miss those days. 

                Westport, Connecticut, 1990's

Poetry:

Coup d'essai:

Favorite Musician/song:

Favorite Book/author:

Favorite Movie/DVD:

July 30, 2014 "Zujeily"

First Words

      …thoughts of an anachronistic, solo pediatrician

                    by Glenn Feole, M.D.

        "Be careful too that the reading of your story makes the melancholy 

        laugh and the merry laugh louder," Cervantes, Prologue to Don Quixote

Contact: ishmaelish36@gmail.com

Blog site: ishmaelish36.blogspot.com

July 30, 2014

Florida, The Gulf: 5

Chief Complaint: (written on the chart before I go in the room)

     “co,ld sxs”

Interesting Name:

     Zujeily

Anecdote:

     After I had a particularly aerobically demanding visit with a three year old, the child turned to his Mother and pleaded, "I want to go home and relax."

      Westport, Connecticut   1990's

Poetry:

Evasive Maneuvers

I grew up hiding from the other children.

I would break off from the pack

on its patrol of the streets every Saturday

and end up alone behind a hedge

or down a dim hallway in a strange basement.

No one ever came looking for me,

which only added to the excitement.

I used to hide from adults, too,

mostly behind my mother's long coat

or her floral dress depending on the seasons.

I tried to learn how to walk

between my father's steps while he walked

like the trick poodle I had seen on television.

And I hid behind books,

usually one of the volumes of the encyclopedia

that was kept behind glass in a bookcase,

the letters of the alphabet in gold.  

Before I knew how to read,

I sat in an armchair in the living room

and turned the pages, without a clue

about the words that were pressed

between D and F, M and O, W and Z.

Maybe this explains why

I looked out the bedroom window

first thing this morning

at the heavy trees, low gray clouds,

and said the word gastropod  out loud,

and having no idea what it meant

went downstair and looked it up

then hid in the woods from my wife and our dog.

   by Billy Collins, from Ballistics

Coup d'essai:

"…a knight errant without a lady is like a tree without leaves or fruit and a body without a soul," Don Quixote, Cervantes  Part I, Chapter I, p. 34

    The chapter goes on later to explain that he once knew "…a very good-looking farm girl, whom he had been taken with at one time, although she is supposed not to have known it or had proof of it.  Her name was Aldonza Lorenzo, and she it was he thought fit to call the lady of his fancies…he resolved to call her Dulcinea del Toboso."

    When I once asked my Uncle Ray (the quiet jazz pianist from Texas) if he had many girl friends growing up, he said, "Yes, Glenn.  I had many.  They didn't know they were my girlfriends, but I had many."

Favorite Musician/song:

   "How to Destroy Angels" Remix by Deadmau5

You can listen to this at:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7KMBo_v1IU

    I was driving to the clinic last night at 11 p.m. and was listening to ECHOES.org on NPR.  It was a driveway moment as I put my head back and just absorbed this song, sitting in the dark, deserted parking lot for 15 minutes.  I usually carry a pen in the car for just such moments but I couldn't find one…a comical scene as I scurried into the clinic, unlocked the doors, grabbed a pen and ran back to the car just in time to hear who the musician was.
    This reminds me of the present I got (Daft Punk)…which I will tell you about tomorrow (saw well as  the group Jaw Gems).
    In any case, I love the eclectic sounds of drum sounds, all different and creative, the all-pervasive keyboards in the background.

Favorite Book/author:

Bronte, Emily

    Wuthering Heights

          What a family…the Bronte sisters.  Now that is one dinner I would have liked to attend just to hear the conversations between them.  A lonely childhood as I recall reading about but redeemed by the absence a television…rather, long walks on the moors and writing fantasies.

Favorite Movie/DVD:

The Birdcage, with Robin Williams

     Hilarious and gentle in many ways.  The ending scene with Gene Hackman dressed as a woman trying to escape by dancing his way out of the gay bar (to the song We Are Family) is one of the funniest around.
     Gene Hackman…his part in Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven was very powerful (also one of my favorite movies).  I think my favorite quality in a human being is humility and I recall reading an interview recently in Time Magazine where Gene Hackman says that he never watches himself in his films; it makes him uncomfortable…nauseous.  Ha.  They were filming a movie in his hometown down south and he had not been in any recent movies.  He went up to one of the film people on the street and asked if they needed any extras.  he told him no.

July 29, 2014 Tuesday "Rainbow"

First Words

      …thoughts of an anachronistic, solo pediatrician

                    by Glenn Feole, M.D.

        "Be careful too that the reading of your story makes the melancholy 

        laugh and the merry laugh louder," Cervantes, Prologue to Don Quixote

Contact: ishmaelish36@gmail.com

Blog site: ishmaelish36.blogspot.com

July 29, 2014  Tuesday

Chief Complaint: (written on the chart before I go in the room)

     "wolfin' cough"

Interesting Name:

     Rainbow

Anecdote:

     The young Mother, a patient as well as a friend, was in amazing physical shape.  She exercised regularly, as evidenced by her lean, chiseled limbs.  She had come in for a form and I turned around while sitting at the nurse's desk to say hi to her children.  

     I reached out and playfully grabbed three year old Henry as he tried to run away and hugged him, squealing with delight, in my arms.  Molly, age six, was smiling, her head tilted shyly, so I also grabbed her as she laughed and gave her a big hug, engulfing her small body in my arms.  

    Henry, precocious as usual, looked at me with a brilliant idea, grabbed his Mother's tan thin leg and cried out, "Dr. Feole, now do Mom!"

          Westport, Connecticut  1990's

Poetry:

One of the Butterflies

The trouble with pleasure is the timing
it can overtake me without warning
and be gone before I know it is here
it can stand facing me unrecognized
while I am remembering somewhere else
in another age or someone not seen
for years and never to be seen again
in this world and it seems that I cherish
only now a joy I was not aware of
when it was here although it remains
out of reach and will not be caught or named
or called back and if I could make it stay
as I want to it would turn to pain. 

                           by W. S. Merwin from The Shadow of Sirius

Coup d'essai:

Favorite Musician/song:

Bruce Hornsby,  "The Way It Is"

     Memories of my children, family, love, joy.

Favorite Book/author: ...

Favorite Movie/DVD:

     Once, with Glenn Hansard

          A beautiful love story filled with incredibly beautiful music, set in Dublin.  The friendships, the non-materialism of these musicians…

July 28, 2014 Monday "Any questions?"

First Words

      …thoughts of an anachronistic, solo pediatrician

                    by Glenn Feole, M.D.

        "Be careful too that the reading of your story makes the melancholy 

        laugh and the merry laugh louder," Cervantes, Prologue to Don Quixote

Contact: ishmaelish36@gmail.com

Blog site: ishmaelish36.blogspot.com

July 28, 2014  Monday

Impressions of the Met, p. 10 of 10
This is the last picture of this book.  I hope you have enjoyed it.

Chief Complaint: (written on the chart before I go in the room)

     “albterol – 2 ihales when needed” 

Interesting Name:

     Myliya 

Anecdote:

     Christopher, age four, was full of life and very precocious.  He was here for an ear infection and I explained about taking an antibiotic, what to do for a cough, as well as starting a nebulizer of wheezing.  

     He usually has many questions for me, as well as running editorial comments on the whole process.  He knows me pretty well and he took my instructions in very calmly, sitting on the stretcher expressionlessly, an implacable gaze on his face. 

     When I finished he said, “Dr. Feole?”

“Yes, Christopher.”

“Do you have any questions?”

          March, 2008 South Carolina

Poetry:

Once I Pass’d through a Populous City

Once I pass’d through a populous city imprinting my brain

   for future use with its shows, architecture, customs, traditions,

Yet now of all the city I remember only a woman I casually met

   There who detain’d me for love of me.

Day by day and night by night we were together – all else 

   has long been forgotten by me,

I remember I say only that woman who passionately clung to me,

Again we wander, we love, we separate again,

Again she holds me by the hand, I must not go,

I see her close beside me with silent lips sad and tremulous.

          by Walt Whitman

Coup d'essai:

Favorite Musician/song:

Favorite Book/author:

Favorite Movie/DVD:

     Waking Ted Devine

    Beautiful Irish Countryside and Irish characters…including duplicates of my Irish Father-in-law

July 27, 2014 Sunday "Loyalty"

First Words

      …thoughts of an anachronistic, solo pediatrician

                    by Glenn Feole, M.D.

        "Be careful too that the reading of your story makes the melancholy 

        laugh and the merry laugh louder," Cervantes, Prologue to Don Quixote

Contact: ishmaelish36@gmail.com

Blog site: ishmaelish36.blogspot.com

July 27, 2014  Sunday

Impressions of the Met, p. 9 of 10

Chief Complaint: (written on the chart before I go in the room)

     “overfed”  (computer diagnosis)

Interesting Name:

     Loyalty

Anecdote:

     A very outgoing three year old kept reaching for my otoscope as I knelt down to look into his ears.  He just seemed to have that strong curiosity and a drive to do things for himself.    Probably a future chairman of a Pediatrics program.  

     I gave him the otoscope and he peered very carefully into my ears.  I thought he was finished, but he then asked me to open my mouth.  He examined my throat very carefully, looking at every nook and cranny, his eyebrows knit together in a frown.  He then silently proceeded to my nostrils, moved up to my eyes as he carefully shined the light into my eyes.  I think he was making note of how the pupils changed size due to the light.  It was a very thorough, serious exam.  I was impressed.  

     I thought he was finished and I smiled and reached for the light when he said “Wait,” put his hands on the sides of my head and made me bend my head forward.  He then took the light and, very meticulously, examined my bald spot.  

     I asked him if it was alright.  He paused, and then looked me in the eye and said with gravity, “It’s alright.”  

     I was relieved.

           South Carolina, July, 2007

Poetry:

Cowboy Boots

            for my Father-in-law

and best friend

George Dewey Clark, Jr.

We took him feet first out the front.  He should have had

his cowboy boots on.  The New Jersey sky he loved 

 was darkening, the black hearse crouched on the well worn driveway.

The undertakers laughed as they closed the doors.  So I looked back

by the garage where he had listened to the big bands on Saturday nights

the steak sizzled on the half-cut industrial drum

the wine and whiskey flowed, the cigar smoke drifted

Year after year glided by as we talked and changed.

It was there I learned how to laugh, in the evenings by the glowing logs.

My wife smiled as Mr. Clark whisked me away

for late night Creme de Banana by the blazing fire

in the golden oaked, rough beamed kitchen

Willie Nelson and a dance with the girls in the living room

at 2 a.m.  And singing and banging pots at the New Year

and stories and more stories about the past, about cowboys,

about New Jersey and tobacco and the ports of World War Two.

The last story was about dying and how to do it.  I watched.

A shower, more pillows, an accident in the bathroom.  No matter.

Like St. Francis' kiss, like Theresa crying in Calcutta,

his groaning body was transformed before my eyes.

It was Guantanomo bay, 1944, again.  

A Cuban cigar, lots of wine, singing 

and, of course, stories of beautiful women.  

Thank you's for my help, a look, 

a bond between buddies going through their last battle together.  

So I read to him my stories this time. The circle

was closing on twenty-one years of tales. I told him

how much I'd learned by watching and absorbing his life

an Apache warrior at the feet of the wrinkled man

by the dying fire on the wide Wyoming plain.

And by the garage was Cal with an empty bottle

of beer, a rocket waiting, a match cracked alive.

The hearse rolled down the sloping driveway slowly,

the flag he saluted by the well house, lifted out of the way,

was at half mast, as the rocket sped to the waiting sky

in a widening gyre, a deafening roar, and exploded

as we watched him slowly leave his beloved farmhouse

the dying sparklers hanging limply from our hands.  

Glenn Feole

   December 5, 1996

    Westport, Ct.

Coup d'essai:

"…unless he had windmills on the brain,"  Sancho Panza, Don Quixote, Cervantes, Chapter  VIII, p. 69.

"…and even worse, turn poet, for that disease is incurable and catching, so they say,"  Don Quixote, Chapter VI, p. 63.

     Thank goodness that people have windmills on the brain.  The bold leap...the creative, impossible gesture...the nonsensical romantic dream...the courage to pursue a passion.  

Favorite Musician/song:

CSN&Y (Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young)  "Our House"
 

from New Moon Cafe, a great vegetarian restaurant in Aiken, Ga. 

     Brings me instantly back to that innocent coming of age time in 7th grade and then high school…the golden musical time of the 1960's.  Their harmonies, lyrics and the beauty of their music inspired me to pursue music.  It was the purity of the '60's…social conscience, love and peace, community…the Woodstock generation, minus the any drugs.
     Any of you with those memories?

Favorite Book/author:

Michael Connelly, The Black Echo

    An Edgar Award winner for best first mystery.  Riveting, suspenseful.  His first novel and the voice and command of character grabbed me from the start.  One of those books that you finish at 4 a.m.

Favorite Movie/DVD:

A Man Named Pearl (documentary, gardening, sculpture)

   A gem…pursue your passion and creativity.

July 26, 2014 Saturday "Emperor"

First Words

      …thoughts of an anachronistic, solo pediatrician

                    by Glenn Feole, M.D.

        "Be careful too that the reading of your story makes the melancholy 

        laugh and the merry laugh louder," Cervantes, Prologue to Don Quixote

Contact: ishmaelish36@gmail.com

Blog site: ishmaelish36.blogspot.com

July 26, 2014 Saturday

Impressions of the Met, p. 8 of 10

Chief Complaint: (written on the chart before I go in the room)

     “Rash on ear.  Constipated.” 

Interesting Name:

     Emperor

Anecdote:

     A new nurse had just started work at the office.  We stood in the waiting room as I explained to her that I loved being a solo pediatrician because of the special relationship with my patients and the sense of closeness we all had.  The early evening sunlight was drifting through the beautiful French doors as the leaves of the majestic trees gently waved in the breeze.  My family was in this same house and I was surrounded by my staff that I loved.  It was an idyllic moment for me.  

     I had just checked a five year old's throat and we had had a good time.  He strode ahead of his Mother through the waiting room, marched right by us, went out the front door, and then opened it back up a crack, stuck his head back through and with a grin on his face yelled, "See you later, suckers."

          Westport, Connecticut, 1990's

Poetry:

In My Craft or Sullen Art

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art. 

     Dylan Thomas

Coup d'essai:

    I grew up listening to Dylan Thomas' reading of "A Child's Christmas in Wales" and was forever moved by the sensuousness of his images, words and voice.  Mysterious and deep…I suspected that life's deeper meanings were hidden, to be searched for in these haunting images ("the common wages of their most secret heart"…"the moon rages"…"sullen art exercised in the still of the night").

Favorite Musician/song:

Bob James, Angela (Theme from "Taxi")

     It gives me chills of nostalgia to hear this song, so reminiscent of my my Uncle Ray's (Ray Breault) piano playing.  Uncle Ray was a professional jazz musician in Texas and turned me on to Thelonious Monk and Bill Evans.
     Youtube has a rendition of this piece that is superb - the bass player, the incredible Asian jazz guitarist, the drummer.   Exquisite.  The song is beautiful and haunting.
     In Westport, I would finish seeing patients in my home office around 9 p.m. or later, only to drive 15 minutes to Norwalk Hospital to see any of the new babies that were born that day.  It was  mid-December night, icy and cold with snow on the ground and the wind howling.  I had just pulled up outside of the hospital, shivering and ready to make a run to the back door to the nursery…when "Angela" came on the jazz radio station I was listening to.  I was mesmerized for the next fifteen minutes as I listened to the beauty of this piece, all thoughts of the cold gone.

     Here is the youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2XXDKpofYk

Please let me know what you think.  Would love to hear your comments on this, dear readers…

Favorite Book/author:

Bauby, Jean-Dominique

    The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

The film is also one of my favorites, both being delicate and sensitive mediations on life.  It also has one of the most sensuous eating scenes in any movie I have ever seen (reminiscent of the opening scene in "Eat Drink Man and Woman")

Favorite Movie/DVD:

     2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)

     The music alone…and the cinematography.  Mysterious, unexplainable… and the source for the name of the "iPod" by Steve Jobs (famous quote by the computer, HAL).

July 25, 2014 Friday "Remedy"

First Words

      …thoughts of an anachronistic, solo pediatrician

                    by Glenn Feole, M.D.

        "Be careful too that the reading of your story makes the melancholy 

        laugh and the merry laugh louder," Cervantes, Prologue to Don Quixote

Contact: ishmaelish36@gmail.com

Blog site: ishmaelish36.blogspot.com

July 25, 2014 Friday

Impressions of the Met, p. 7 of 10

Contact: ishmaelish36@gmail.com

Chief Complaint: (written on the chart before I go in the room)

     “discuss milk”

Interesting Name:

     Remedy

Anecdote:

     I was in the Public Health Service in Paterson, N.J., from 1985 to 1987, serving two years after my pediatric residency.   It was a rough inner city neighborhood.  There was  a janitor there named Roy whom I liked very much.  

     We were talking after hours one night as he was mopping the entryway.  It was a warm pleasant night and we were enjoying telling each other stories and anecdotes.  He suddenly looked serious and told me about some illness, some mild aches and pains, he had had  recently.  He decided to share some medical knowledge with me and I felt honored. 

     "Codliver oil breaks the cold, and castor oil works the cold.  And the most important thing about pneumonia is to keep it from going to your skull, chest, and knee caps."  I slowly and seriously nodded in gratitude for this information.

          Paterson, New Jersey, 1985

Poetry:

Carlos

My first day leading the prison writing workshop: Carlos 

complimented my choosing the chair nearest the door. 

I read a poem by Whitman that once sent me hitchhiking 

and Carlos stood up, asked to read a section from his four hundred-page work-in-progress, 

a poem that turns on his first finding Neruda's "One Year Walk"; 

he said it lit up the night like a perfect crime, so I left everything—

I had no choice—walked three thousand miles to the Pacific. 

From memory he recited a passage in which his father left the family 

a small fortune, all counterfeit: though I doubted the facts, I can still see 

that worn briefcase, almost-perfect hundreds stacked neatly in shrink-wrapped packs. 

I was young, it took me two weeks to accept that I could teach this lifer 

nothing. World of concrete floors and everlasting light: 

he was grateful to God who gave him a blazing mind not granted to anyone living or dead, 

and wouldn't have changed a word anyway.

    by Theodore Deppe

Coup d'essai:  Words

"…my master will out-talk thirty lawyers," Sancho Panza, Don Quixote, Part I, Ch. 47, p. 422

"Sometimes, in a summer morning…I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness…until by the sun falling in at my west window…I was reminded of the lapse of time.  I grew in those seasons like corn in the night," Thoreau, Walden.
   

Favorite Musician/song:

James Taylor, "Carry Me On My Way"

    My all-time favorite musician.  Too big of a topic to even talk about right now…  I first saw him perform his first album while I was at Princeton, perhaps 1971.  Long hair, acoustic songs with their gentle messages.  The gym was packed to the rafters, Taylor with just his acoustic guitar, playing softly.  Some one yelled out, "Louder!"  He replied with a smile in his self-deprecating way, "Softer."

Favorite Book/author:

Edmund Morris

     Teddy Roosevelt (biography)

Gripping, with details of TR's early life…cigars and horse drawn sleigh rides for asthmatic episodes as a frail child and then…a transformation when he took a trip out West in his twenties to hunt buffalo.   He came back a changed man - "as tough as a hickory nut"… you could enclose his waist with your hands.  

Favorite Movie/DVD:

Mystery Train

    A lot of silence here and cinematography that draws you in.  Humorous and touching.

July 24, 2014 Thursday "Magnus"

First Words

      …thoughts of an anachronistic, solo pediatrician

                    by Glenn Feole, M.D.

        "Be careful too that the reading of your story makes the melancholy 

        laugh and the merry laugh louder," Cervantes, Prologue to Don Quixote

Contact: ishmaelish36@gmail.com

Blog site: ishmaelish36.blogspot.com

July 24, 2014 Thursday

Impressions of the Met, p. 6 of 10

Contact: ishmaelish36@gmail.com

Chief Complaint: (written on the chart before I go in the room)

     “He has cooties”  (per Mother)

Interesting Name:

     Magnus

Anecdote:

"Is she eating solids?" I asked the Mother about her nine month old daugher.

"Yes.  She's cheerio'ing."

          Westport, Connecticut, 19990's

Poetry:

Learning Italian Slowly

I learn three words each day. It's been seven months now and
perhaps I could carry on a conversation with a Sicilian child. If she
spoke slowly. In present tense. And only about pencils and dogs
and cheese. Sometimes I feel my new Italian self growing inside
me. He's a little man who gesticulates as he speaks. He rides his
bicycle to the market to buy eggplant, anise, and porcini. Then
delivers them to his elderly mother. In the afternoon he plays
bocce with the older men. The children mimic the way he
whispers to himself. The grimaces he makes with his face. When
the moon comes out he slicks back his hair and sings beneath the
window of the woman he loves. What a sight he is. Down on one
knee. His arms outstretched. So willing to make a fool of himself.
Over and over again.

    by David Shumate

Coup d'essai:

"…and then we'll see, as one blind man said to another," Sancho Panza, Don Quixote, Part I, Chapter 50, p. 443.

Favorite Musician/song:

Favorite Book/author:

Favorite Movie/DVD:

July 23, 2014 Wednesday “follow-up: trouble”

First Words

      …thoughts of an anachronistic, solo pediatrician

                    by Glenn Feole, M.D.

        "Be careful too that the reading of your story makes the melancholy 

        laugh and the merry laugh louder," Cervantes, Prologue to Don Quixote

Contact: ishmaelish36@gmail.com

Blog site: ishmaelish36.blogspot.com

July 23, 2014 Wednesday

Contact: ishmaelish36@gmail.com

Impressions of the Met, p. 4 of 10

Chief Complaint: (written on the chart before I go in the room)

     “follow-up: trouble”

Interesting Name:

     Zammarraney

Anecdote:

     Nick was three and one-half years old and a pip.  He was too young to drink coffee but, by his behavior, it sure seemed like he was sneeking some high octane Columbian brew.  

   Usually, when he caught a glimpse of me in the office, he'd scream out "DOC...TOR. FE...O...LE!" with his arms wide open, his face gleaming, eyebrows arched high, and then he'd launch into a  sprint and speed down the hallway, legs whirling, and hurl his body at me.  I would catch him in mid-air and he would hug my knees tightly after we collided.  Its the kind of thing that would make my day.

      Today, however, Nick had a sore throat and was under the weather...a little.  It didn't dampen his spirits much.  After I did the throat culture, which he bravely withstood, I said, 

     "O.K. Nick.  Would you like a stamp on your hand now?"  

     He bellowed out, "GEEZ!  YA!  Give me one of those stamps, BABE!" as he slapped me five a few times.

               Westport, Connecticut, 1980's

Poetry:

Open your hands,
if you want to be held.

Sit down in this circle.

    Rumi

Coup d'essai:

"I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he who goes afoot."  Thoreau, Walden p. 36, "On Economy."

     I recall that once, in Princeton, New Jersey, in the 1970's after I had taken a leave of absence from medical school to play music for a few years, I had almost no material possessions except my bass guitar, a mattress, many books and a lot of music and friends.  I was living a simple life, no T.V. as usual, music always playing, cooking dinners with my friends…in my mind it was the spiritual life of the philosopher and seeker that I always emulated.
     One day I was walking along a road and a police officer pulled up and questioned me.  I asked if I had done anything wrong.  He said, "I saw you walking…we don't get many walkers around here."  I had to laugh.  He was kind and we had a nice conversation; he was as amused and befuddled by me as I was of him.  It was a nice walk.

Favorite Musician/song:

     AWB (Average White Band), "Just Want to Love You Tonight."

    This seems too big of a topic for me to handle right now (ha)…so much to say.   AWB...the main reason I actually took a leave of absence from medical school in 1974 was to play bass and form a band that emulated AWB.  And I did.   (Earth Wind and Fire was the other diad of this essence of soul for me).  Soul music, incredible bass lines, harmonies, rhythm guitar, tasteful drums…
    This is an all-time favorite romantic song of mine.

Favorite Book/author:

     Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
 
     The atmosphere, the images, the strong, independent voice of this young woman.

Favorite Movie/DVD:

     Brooklyn Castle.

     This is a gem.  It is a documentary about a middle school in Brooklyn that has a chess club that turns out to be one of the best in the country.  The stories of these children, from impoverished backgrounds, and the self-esteem and guidance they get from their peers and teachers is very moving.

July 22, 2014 Tuesday "Tuff"

First Words

      …thoughts of an anachronistic, solo pediatrician

                    by Glenn Feole, M.D.

        "Be careful too that the reading of your story makes the melancholy 

        laugh and the merry laugh louder," Cervantes, Prologue to Don Quixote

Contact: ishmaelish36@gmail.com

Blog site: ishmaelish36.blogspot.com

July 22, 2014 Tuesday

Impressions of the Met, p 4 of 10

Chief Complaint: (written on the chart before I go in the room)

“low grade sx”   

     (In medical practice, the abbreviation 'sx' stands for symptoms…as opposed to…well…)

Interesting Name:

     Tuff

Anecdote:

     Taylor, age five, was full of life.  He would tease me and generally zip around the room having fun during his exam.  His Mother and I were discussing discipline and we were going into more and more detail about certain situations.  Taylor probably wasn't enamored of the subject matter and kept trying to interrupt.  His Mother kept telling him to wait a minute and he finally just walked off.  

    He came back into the exam room with something in his hands just as my finger was jabbing the air as I made a particularly forceful point.  He climbed onto the exam table near me and gently, in mid-sentence, put a piece of tape over my mouth.

          Westport, Connecticut, 1990's

Poetry:

Coup d'essai:

"Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me,"  Thoreau, Walden, p. 3, Chapter One.
 

Favorite Musician/song:

Favorite Book/author:

Favorite Movie/DVD: