August 1, 2014 Friday "Neilmha"

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

August 1, 2014 Friday

Florida, The Gulf: No. 6

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

     “writting is a problem”  (on a neurology consult report)

Interesting Name:

     Neilmha (pronounced ‘Nee ah my ah’ by the Mother)   

     When I asked her how to spell it, the Mother attempted it a couple of times and finally became exasperated.  She finally said, “I don’t know how to spell it.”

Anecdote:

     Over the past seven years, I have seen "Luke," a gentle giant of a patient who is happiest on his South Carolinian family farm, mature into a wonderful 18 year old.  I will give some anecdotes of him over the next several days.  Here is the first, from just a few weeks ago:

     Luke, whom I have known for seven years and written about before, came in for an ADHD check.  He was 18 years old, finally, and had managed to make it through high school.  He was over six feet tall and well over 280 lbs, all muscle and stocky torso and power.  

     He had told me years ago when I asked about his future plans that college was not for him.  He just wanted to be home with his Moma and family and continue farming on their family’s farm.  

     “Are you going to study farming in school?” I asked tentatively. 

     “No, just farm.”

    As he lay there today, massive, on the exam table, his huge worn farm boots covered with dirt and hanging a foot over edge of the table, I asked for an update on his farm.  I did this every time I saw him and would just sit back and bask in the new tale.

    “We have over a thousand quail now!”  He went into the intricacies of hatching them, explaining how so many just don’t make it due to the warmth and humidity…he told me that his Father used to come in crying because over 70 had died but he had "toughened up over the years" he said and now accepted it.  Little did Luke know that I had watched him as well toughen up as he stoically accepted the rigors of his work on the farm through grade school and now high school.  

     “Do you eat the quail?”  I naively asked.  Part of the warmth and delight in our conversations was how amused and intrigued we both were at the different universes we each lived in.  

     “Eat them?"  He was stunned, the look on his face showing shock.  "Yes!  Yes we eat them!  They are delicious.  Once you eat them you will just throw chicken away.  They are so good you want to slap someone.”   

      He told me, as his Mother beamed with pride, that he and his sister had just bought “four Momma cows” and had "put on and taken off" many young calves for milking.  They had over a hundred milking cows and were a real team.

     He had arrived.

           South Carolina, June, 2014

Poetry:

too sweet

I have been going to the track for so
long that
all the employees know
me,
and now with winter here
it's dark before the last
race.
as I walk to the parking lot
the valet recognizes my
slouching gait
and before I reach him
my car is waiting for me,
lights on, engine warm.
the other patrons
(still waiting)
ask,
"who the hell is that
guy?"

I slip the valet a
tip, the size depending upon the
luck of the
day (and my luck has been amazingly
good lately)
and I then am in the machine and out on
the street
as the horses break
from the gate.

I drive east down Century Blvd.
turning on the radio to get the result of that
last race.

at first the announcer is concerned only with
bad weather and poor freeway
conditions.
we are old friends: I have listened to his
voice for decades but,
of course, the time will finally come
when neither one of us will need to
clip our toenails or
heed the complaints of our
women any longer.

meanwhile, there is a certain rhythm
to the essentials that now need
attending to.
I light my cigarette
check the dashboard
adjust the seat and
weave between a Volks and a Fiat.
as flecks of rain spatter the
windshield
I decide not to die just
yet:
this good life just smells too
sweet.

   by Charles Bukowski

Coup d'essai:

"…a simple and irrepressible satisfaction with the gift of life…" Thoreau, Walden, Ch. 1, p. 54

     I remember a counselor telling me, "When are you going to stop seeking peace and just find it right now?"  It made me pause and question my life's philosophical quest, sometime laborious and serious.  It often seems that happiness, fulfillment is just around the distant corner…after the next better job, the nicer home, the better relationship.  He  then added, "You can have peace right now…not tomorrow but right this minute."
     It reminds me of the quote I love from Don Quixote that bread tastes as good whether you are rich or poor.  My Father-in-law, the Iris Leprechaun George Dewey Clark, epitomized this and I have a whole journal (as my family knows) of stories about his zest for living in the moment.  Here's one:
    It was a sultry summer evening in New Jersey in the 1970's.  We had just had dinner in the old farm house kitchen when we heard some fire trucks pull up outside in front of their house, a hundred feet down their sloping lawn.  We all crowded around the screened windows, excited and curious,  looking at the firemen in the darkness under a street light as they calmly opened up a fire hydrant with a huge wrench.  It was a peaceful summer scene, quiet, the crickets chirping in the night.  I asked out loud, "What are they doing?"
     Mr. Clark, a gleam on his face, exclaimed, "They're bleeding the hydrant to flush it out!"  I turned my head as I saw him disappear like a bolt of lightening up the stairs to his bedroom.  In a flash he came running down in his bathing suit and dashed out the front door with a yelp.  He ran up the the firemen and shook their hands as they laughed.   We all watched him sit down in front of the powerful stream of water, the jet stream cascading off his back in all directions as he rubbed water over his chest, down his arms, his typical joyful smile, ecstatic, on his face.  
 

Favorite Musician/song:

     Band of Horses, "Infinite Arms"

     My daughter and her husband, Kelly and Kevin, turned me on to this band and this song while we were in Florida.  Gorgeous.

Favorite Book/author:

Charles Bukowski
    Sometimes You Get So Alone

    I remember showing one of Bukowski's poems to my son, Ben, in the Westport library…sneaking among the stacks, laughing quietly, afraid to be caught, at his outrageous illicit humor.  

Favorite Movie/DVD:

     Arthur, with Dudley Moore