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 1, 2014 Tuesday
Chief Complaint: (written on the chart before I go in the room)
“A myriad of pains”
(A note a doctor put on the chart during a visit)
Interesting Name:
Candy
Anecdote:
A two year old boy was in for his yearly exam. His last name didn’t end in a vowel but it could have.
I was asking the Mother about his speech. He seemed very taciturn to me as he walked around the room, casually pointing at his sippy cup when he was thirsty, or pointing to the book on the floor as an objective scientific observation, like a tiny Darwin might have pointed to a turtle.
“He speaks well,” she said. She gave me a list of a few words that he said. He looked at me silently. I wasn’t convinced.
“Can you get him to say something,” I said, a little pleading quality entering my voice.
“Can you get him to say something,” I said, a little pleading quality entering my voice.
“David, say ‘cat.’”
He considered it for awhile, turned to me, and shrugged his shoulders as he raised both hands in a palms up gesture. His face was blasé and expressionless.
“Say ‘dog,’ David.” Again, the passive eyes fixed mine and he shrugged his shoulders even higher, his palms now reaching higher than his shoulders. This was probably the equivalent of shouting the answer to me.
After more coaxing, I have to admit that he said a couple of words. Sort of. Dog? His lips barely parted at the right corner of his mouth and a quick, evanescent sound bite came out that was barely perceptible. I had to lean over and put my ear near his mouth to hear the whispered word…and there it was.
The Mom asked if the word was ok.
I shrugged.
South Carolina, August, 2007
 Many of these phrases are from my journals, some written during yoga retreats, some said by the yogi running the retreat. |
Poetry:
Puzzle Dust
When the final piece is lifted and set in place,
completing the field, filling the hole
in a grove of trees, a jagged gap
in the ocean or the flat, black sky.
When the scene is whole before me:
tiny men, arms thin as wicks, walking
briskly along a gray rain-riven street,
the woman bent to her dog under an awning,
his wet head held up with trust,
one white paw in her hand, tip
of his tail I kept trying all day
to press into the starry night, ruffled
hem of her blown-up skirt
that never fit into the distant waves
breaking along the shore,
and the bridge, its rickrack of steel girders
I thought were train tracks or a fallen fence,
when it all, at last, makes sense, a vast
satisfaction fills me: the mossy boulders,
pleasing in their eternal random piles,
the river eased around them, green
with its fever to reach the sea,
a ragged bunch of flowers gathered
from the hills I've locked together,
edge to edge, and placed in a glittering vase
behind a window streaked with rain
which the child in his woolen cap
looks into: boxes of candy wrapped
and displayed, desire burning
in his belly, precursor to the fire
that could have broken his small heart
open like a coal someday
in his future, which for him
is nothing but this empty box
layered with a fine dust, the stuff
from which he was born and will
die into, carried, weightless,
to summer's open door
where I bang my hand against
the cardboard, watch the particles,
like chaff or ashes, vanish in wind.
completing the field, filling the hole
in a grove of trees, a jagged gap
in the ocean or the flat, black sky.
When the scene is whole before me:
tiny men, arms thin as wicks, walking
briskly along a gray rain-riven street,
the woman bent to her dog under an awning,
his wet head held up with trust,
one white paw in her hand, tip
of his tail I kept trying all day
to press into the starry night, ruffled
hem of her blown-up skirt
that never fit into the distant waves
breaking along the shore,
and the bridge, its rickrack of steel girders
I thought were train tracks or a fallen fence,
when it all, at last, makes sense, a vast
satisfaction fills me: the mossy boulders,
pleasing in their eternal random piles,
the river eased around them, green
with its fever to reach the sea,
a ragged bunch of flowers gathered
from the hills I've locked together,
edge to edge, and placed in a glittering vase
behind a window streaked with rain
which the child in his woolen cap
looks into: boxes of candy wrapped
and displayed, desire burning
in his belly, precursor to the fire
that could have broken his small heart
open like a coal someday
in his future, which for him
is nothing but this empty box
layered with a fine dust, the stuff
from which he was born and will
die into, carried, weightless,
to summer's open door
where I bang my hand against
the cardboard, watch the particles,
like chaff or ashes, vanish in wind.
by Dorianne Laux, from Facts About the Moon.
My philosophy thesis was on Sartre's Being and Nothingness, and included some Freudian topics as well. I once mentioned, tongue in cheek,as I was thinking about my undergraduate years as a pre-med and philosophy major and then going to medical school, "Nothing prepared me for medical school."
Nothingness gives me the freedom to create, to decide, to live. An existential concept. I am reading a book called "Why Does the World Exist" by Jim Hold, recommended by "Read This!" (a wonderful compendium of over a 1,000 books recommended by various independent book store owners and buyers). It is a tour de force, revisiting various philosophical ideas, bringing back fond memories of gentle intellectual conversations.
It is fun to treat the concept of "nothingness" as if it were something. To revisit the joke that he retells on page 42, "Nothing is popularly believed to be better than a dry martini, but worse that sand in the bedsheets. A poor man has it, a rich man needs it, and if you eat it for a long time, it'll kill you… Nothing is impossible for God…"
PART VIII of XX: Migrant Health Care Journal
Aida is the scheduler for return appointments and she was telling me that the patients liked me. She said, “You’d better be careful, or you won’t be able to leave.” A humbling compliment.
We started talking and it turned out that she had been a migrant worker, a “field worker,” for several years before she somehow received some training. Here she was now with a job and responsibility. The staff is largely Hispanic and I’m sure most of them have interesting stories to tell.
We started talking and it turned out that she had been a migrant worker, a “field worker,” for several years before she somehow received some training. Here she was now with a job and responsibility. The staff is largely Hispanic and I’m sure most of them have interesting stories to tell.
This reminds me of Sharon Brown, an attractive African-American woman in her late twenties who took me on a tour of the facility when I first interviewed here. She could tell I was very concerned about the plight of these children, and told me that she had been a field worker during her childhood, coming here from elsewhere in the state with her family to work the fields.
Her father was a field manager. She managed to get into college but her father would make her return to the fields occasionally to ‘bring her back to earth’ and remind her of the hard life she had come from. And here she was, back at the clinic with a nursing administrative degree, helping out. This was also true of Ysauda, who had eventually worked her way from the fields to be a maternity counselor. Very heartening.
Her father was a field manager. She managed to get into college but her father would make her return to the fields occasionally to ‘bring her back to earth’ and remind her of the hard life she had come from. And here she was, back at the clinic with a nursing administrative degree, helping out. This was also true of Ysauda, who had eventually worked her way from the fields to be a maternity counselor. Very heartening.
Favorite Musician/song:
Chopin. Prelude #14.
I remember listening to this in Connecticut, unable to move, due to the sheer energy and inventiveness packed into 32 seconds. I had never heard anyone do this with a piano…like Jimi Hendrix in California setting fire to his guitar. I was mesmerized. Stunned.
Favorite Book/author:
Mark Twain, Autobiography.
Like Don Quixote, V.S. Pritchett, Jhumpa Lahiri, James Herriott…I reread this book constantly.
Treasures of humor, and the most poignant, heart felt chapter I have ever read…the last chapter on his daughter Jean.
Favorite Movie/DVD:
Titanic.
I watched the original in 1997 (17 years ago), not able to even get a seat for several weeks because the lines were so long at the movie theatre. When I finally got in, the only seat left was in the front row. I sat next to a teenage girl who looked straight up at the screen, mouth open, eyes wide, barely breathing, hands clenched under her chin, without moving a muscle for the entire movie… over three hours. And it went by in a flash. True love on the screen and off the screen. And one of the most romantic movies of all time, especially with the moving flash back when Rose had aged into a beautiful, gentle, forgiving Grandmother, sharing her reminiscences.
Kate Winslett …one of my favorite actresses. Fiery, independent, beautiful, articulate.
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