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 13, 2014 Sunday
Chief Complaint: (written on the chart before I go in the room)
“Patient has cough and ears.”
Interesting Name:
Crystal Hydro
Anecdote:
I just had a discussion about colic with a Mother on the telephone and it made me think of all the anachronisms in pediatric practice. She had called because her baby was acting 'colicky,' and I commiserated with this seemingly endless howling. I recalled my first encounter with a colicky baby as a medical student at Children's Hospital in Cincinnati…I was so worried and upset that I personally carried the baby down to x-ray to make sure there wasn't some horrible abdominal obstruction…which, of course, there wasn't.
I started to tell her that sometimes babies cry so hard that you'd think that a diaper pin was stuck in their skin. But I suddenly realized that she probably couldn't relate to this. A diaper pin? How anachronistic. I had used this analogy intermittently for the last twelve years but I now have come to realize that it is as out of date as referring to a typewriter or record player. (I remember a tennis pro once telling his students to swing 'like the back and forth motion of a typewriter' - which no one understood I thought.)
About four or five years ago I used to laugh and congratulate the occasional Mother I'd see when her baby had actual clothe diapers on with bona fide safety pins. It was such a novelty. In the last few years I have not seen one safety pin. (On a recent trip to Boston, I went into an eclectic store that sold items for babies and bought two diaper pins, one with a blue and the other with a pink plastic safety top…I keep them in my office as a nostalgic museum relic of sorts.) They have gone the way of the horse and buggy, shoe laces and non-digital clocks. And yet, tying your shoes for the first time used to be a rite of passage; forget remembering where you were when you heard that Kennedy was shot.
I recently asked all my son's friends at his eleven year old birthday party about tying their shoes. They all universally remembered the circumstances of being taught to tie a bow in their showlaces. But even this may be lost with the advent of velcro. I recall a few months ago that the carpenter's helper at my house, a twenty year old, didn't know what 'clockwise' meant.
Back to colic: I'll just have to come up with another analogy for colic, such as: the pain is like touching formula overheated by microwaves, or getting your hair stuck in your velcro "zipper" (whatever a "zipper" used to be). Well, I guess in "the old" days there weren't even telephones for Mothers to use to discuss the intricacies of their children's gas with the pediatrician. (That is, if the clock was wound up to tell the time, and the candle was lit to see it.)
As for me, I'm going to kick back, throw some pea coal in the furnace and listen to the Victrola before I hit the hay.
Westport, Connecticut, 1990's
Poetry:
Coup d'essai:
PART XV of XX: Migrant Health Care Journal
As I was driving back to the hotel in Raleigh after a long, busy day in the clinic, I would just sit back and drive slowly on highway 40, taking in the sights as the golden sun caressed the fields in the dusk, my fellow travelers speeding by. I guess they’re in a hurry to get back to the city and their TV’s. Not me. I’ve even learned to saunter on the highway down here.
Suddenly, two huge trucks pulled along side of me. They had horizontal slots every few inches in their metallic sides and through the slots were the largest hogs I’d ever seen. The hogs seemed peaceful and were leaning up against the truck trying to catch a breeze. Acceptance is the key. This really is one of the many breadbaskets of America. No wonder there’s so much bacon at the Homewood Suites.
On Mondays, an internist who practices medicine with his wife at Duke volunteers at the Migrant Clinic. He is an interesting guy: lean, a short stubble of gray hair shooting up from his scalp and spreading to his face as well. He is a laconic conversationalist. Perhaps he’d rather not talk, but I can tell he enjoys it despite himself. He has some interesting points to make. Bartleby the Schrivener.
He walked past my 1991 gray Volvo and said that he was shocked at the cleanliness of my trunk. I am too. “Don’t you have any kids?” he shouted out, accusingly. I admitted that I did but that since this is the car I traveled with, I could pretend to control the chaos a little. “There’s only a umbrella and some jumping cables in it,” I explained. “I know,” he yelled out incredulously, holding his hands out. He then admitted that his four children were grown, the last two in college. They had inherited his wanderlust. His daughter had been in Central America, then to countries in Europe and was back in Washington, D.C. at, ironically, American University. The nest was empty and he and his wife were about to retire and do some missionary medical work – out of the country, of course. Hence the exposure to Espanol here on Mondays. He was looking at a clinic in Central America and also one in Bolivia affiliated with his church.
Since his last child left for college, he and his wife actually moved into the ‘slum’ area of Duke, much to everyone’s consternation. They downsized. His wife rides her bike to work and after one block of city streets, she’s on the gorgeous Duke campus and loves it.
He did teach me something about Volvo’s, though. He also has one, even older than mine. It has over 200,000 miles on it and he called it a “lunar.” “Lunar?” I asked and then understood: the distance to the moon is about 240,000 miles. “Or maybe they’re lunars because we’re loonie to be still driving them.”
Favorite Musician/song:
Joe Cocker, "With a Little Help from my Friends"
Favorite Book/author:
"Never Coming to a Theater Near You" by Kenneth Turan, film critic for the
LA Times and NPR's
"Morning Edition"
An eclectic mix of films that suits me perfectly…any book with the following film recommendations instantly appealed to me: Ulee's Gold; Eat, Drink, Man, Woman; Spirited Away; Whale Rider; and Thirty Two Short Films about Glenn Gould. His descriptions sound like mine as well, with many of these adjectives…magic, exquisite, moving, beautiful.
Favorite Movie/DVD:
Doc Hollywood, Michael J. Fox
One of the people I look up to with his great attitude and program. Gratitude in action. I will try to copy some of his articles and interviews here later. Doc Hollywood…something I am living here daily. As his character, the upper class doctor, told the small town mayor when he was driving him around the town, "Wow, at least this makes time fly." The Mayor, surprised and offended, said, "Why would you want to make time fly?"
