Learning One Another and the Cunning Fennec Fox

29 July 2014

0711 hrs

(c)  Properfessor

Good morning, Patient Reader . . .

            OK, running on fumes once again.  Got about 2.5 hours of sleep last night, and though that is not unusual for me, I really feel it today. 

            I have a lady friend, the same one of whom I have been writing these past few weeks, who is having some “Baggage” problems, and I have sort of been worried about her lately.  She gets even less sleep than I do- her “baggage” and part-time job/full-time school schedule keeping her in a non-stop, automatic mode.

       I have some strong feelings for this quite lovely woman and I hate to see her going through this particular phase of difficulty. 

            Sometimes we discuss how we met.  I first saw her back in January as she strode into the classroom, perpetually late, cream turtleneck sweater and purple pants, hair and make-up flawless, her tiny frame perfect and proportional in every way.

(c) Properfessor

            Of course, she sat in the diametrically-opposite corner from me in the classroom . . .  If you recall the film project I was a part of two terms ago, this is the same class.  I willed her to sit near me but, alas, it was not to be so.  I leaned over to my friend Shmaren and said, “I’m going out with her one day . . . maybe even two days . . .”

            Shmaren gave me her usual eye-rolling, “you-horny-bastard” look, and I laughed it off . . . Something was very special about this always-tardy Little Doll of a woman. 

(c)  Properfessor

            From the infrequent back-and-forths between her and the Instructor (my profs hate being called profs) I learned just how smart and witty she was.  Two Must-Haves when it comes to potential paramours, if you recall, Patient Reader . . . the third of which being that “she” has to laugh at my jokes . . . whomever “she” may be, right?

            I wanted her, I call her Shmarla, to be in my group for the final project, but selections amongst the students were made primarily on the proximity of one another through the term, as this was our comfort zone.  I had never even spoken to her.

            Cue to spring term, same Instructor; same field of study; same distant seating arrangements.  This time I knew she was going to be in the class, thanks to student access to a list of all participants and their email addresses.

            No attempts were made on either part to communicate to one another.  In fact, I didn’t even know she knew I existed.

            The question posed by the instructor one day was: “Who in here is married?” (Shmani, another classmate, had gotten married over the weekend), and it was at that moment Shmarla turned around to see if I had raised my hand (of course I did not, as you well know, Patient Reader).  She didn’t raise her hand either, and I thought it odd that she turned to make sure I hadn’t raised mine . . .  Our subsequent discussions months later confirmed the significance of this glance.

            One day, as I was walking out of the library, she was on a bench waiting for class to begin.  I had never seen her there before.  She was not waiting for me, I know how romantic that would have been, Patient Reader; she was only waiting until 1400 hrs. 

           

            We have to go now or we’ll be late- I said. 

            How are you- I asked her as a matter of idle conversation . . . we all do it, right?

Her exact words are private, but there was melancholia in her response.  My retort reflected much the same mindset, and it is remarkable that our first ever conversation was so intimate.

      On our way to the class we rode the elevator down together, and it was this ride that a fork in my road appeared, and the choice I made was sound and . . . right.

       I spent that ensuing class looking at her in a new light.  Sure, she is attractive.  Sure, I knew that she was extremely intelligent.  But it was the first time I got a glimpse of that which is her heart.  This mysterious, healing organ that mirrored a black hole with its enigmatic nature, its effect on the bodies around her, and its infinite capacity.  Something with the power to bridge dimensions, or to crush all matter . . . even light.    

There is a comforting blanket in which we have enshrouded ourselves.  There is a safety she finds in me, knowing that her heart and its secrets and fears and hopes are secure and held fast as important and necessary.  There is a peace that she gets from me that she has never had, and I find a bit of euphoria that I am able, finally, to practice what I preach when it comes to, now that I have grown up, treat a woman in the manner in which she deserves as well as desires.  Of course, it helps that she is not bat-shit crazy.

So read below Patient Reader, the next installment of Fonda and the Cunning Fennec Fox.  Thanks for reading thus far, and I hope that you were not too bored.  If you were, then just go fuck off, it’s my blog, and y’all know where the door is.  Except you of course, Patient Reader, I know that you are loyal fans.  Any intellectual would be, right?

Fonda and the Cunning Fennec Fox

ii 

        I know everything there is to know, so far accumulated in the collective knowledge of man, regarding the human nervous system.  Seizure disorder is my specialty, after all.  But the Horrible Darkness I found in my own ignorance of Fonda’s disease was contrapuntal to the exquisitely crystalline clarity of her own bright knowledge of it.  

     I was her student; pupil to Fonda and to CF, and what I learned of one I learned an equal amount in the other.  They were conjoined twins, Fonda and CF.  I could not separate one from the other without removing the existence of both. 

     Fonda called herself a victim of the disease.  Without thinking through to the end, I said, “Survivor . . .”   She turned to me and flatly said, “But Fox, I will not survive this.”

      Fonda had her Siamese twin, only hers was her own murderer.

      I searched for an erudite response, but found none.  What words can the living say that will comfort the dead?  Having never charted these seas, I let Fonda, the Salty Dog, pilot us, this vessel, between her Scylla and my Charybdis. 

      She wore socks with her flip-flops like a geisha, but her hair was that darkish- blond color; a color whose name I never learned. 

      Fonda’s eyes were the severe blue of a desert sky, and I ignored the buzzards that soared high on the thermals roiling in them.  Their circling; their infinite patience.  

      The straight white teeth in her crooked grin softened those eyes, and I felt something move in my chest.  Something broke, as they say, and spilled warm. 

      Fonda did not carry a purse to the gift shop.  In her left fist was a folded five-dollar bill, jutting out like a green, second thumb.  The J-shaped hep lock bookended her hand, taped down next to the blue vein it violated.

      She bought a bouquet at the gift shop with that bill in her fist.  Less a bouquet and more of a flowering potted plant which, ironically in a place that values life so, was made of silk and plastic.

   

      The florets were yellow and white . . . pseudo-impatiens, maybe.  The pot was secreted away in cheesy red foil, but the fake plant was bright and good.

      Fonda bought it to “brighten up the room,” on the 5^th floor in which she lived for one week every month.  That was her reason, but I suspect it was to cheer up her roommate, Amanda.  The plant may have been fake, but Fonda was for real.

      It didn’t take long for me to realize that Fonda did many things for other people all the while playing it off as incidental.

          “I was just on my way to do this-or-that, so I just happened to get X on the way back.  Let’s put it here next to you; it looks better on your side of the room.  Looks great, there . . .”  That sort of thing.

            I bought a newspaper to establish a reason to be in the gift shop, not wanting to show Fonda this early in the relationship how affected I was by her strange, exhilarating magnetism.  

   

            She drew people to her like a warm hearth where no one got burned.

            I changed my day and decided to carry the plant back to her room, you know . . .  because I am such a nice guy.  I held it in my hands, that fake plant, the newspaper under my arm long-forgotten, until we reached the fifth floor.  I do not remember ever having read that paper; that ruse to be with Fonda a few moments longer.  Come on- we’ve all done it.

            Fonda was quite an inspiration to the youngsters on the pediatric floor; those kids looking at her and seeing that she defied all the odds and lived into her twenties.  As with anyone else in her sphere of influence, they were given hope.

            Those kids saw us emerge from the elevator and immediately they shrieked and ran to her.  She squatted and they jostled for a spot on the coveted lap. 

            I knew that patient; Jerry Narcoleptic . . .  and her over there?  That was Katie Partial-Complex Seizure Disorder with Secondary Generalization . . .  and that was Miranda Glioblastoma Multiforme . . .

            But Fonda knew their actual surnames, every one of them, and she introduced me to these long-standing patients of mine for the first time.

            Very quickly I became Dr. Cunning Fennec Fox, and Fonda and I, seemingly, were always in some tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g . . .  or so the kids chanted whenever they saw us together.

            Now let me be clear about this.  At no point was Fonda my patient, nor was she ever even on the neurology service.  She was being followed by the pulmonary service, and the techs that visited her were mostly respiratory therapists, phlebotomists, and pulmonary techs.  In other words, there were no ethical violations with Fonda’s and my relationship.

            Nearly everyone in the medical field has a specialty.  The only exception to this rule would probably be the nurse.  Sure, there are nursing specialties, but even those nurses still know more about healing than any doctor ever will.  

   

            Nurses, at least in the setting of the teaching hospital, have to keep the docs in line.  They are the first defense against crisis.  They notice when a patient is either improving or crumping.  They are the first to note fever, or abnormal fluid intake/output.  The headache that may be more than just that.  The contraindications of meds ordered by a too-tired resident.  Nurses save more lives than anyone.  Too bad they don’t get this credit often enough.  

  

            A near-catastrophe is still not a catastrophe; hard to get pats on the back when the patters don’t even realize how close they came to medical negligence.  

            Not for the first time I wonder how many careers, in addition to patients, a nurse saves every year.

             I am not a nurse.

             Physicians that suspect their patients of neurological deficits send them to me.  Via request for neurological consult.  Instead of paying me a huge salary, I was given the honor of more duties.

    

            Part of my job consisted of conducting neuro exams, order narrow-parameter neurological tests such as Electroencephalography,

Evoked Potentials,

 and Nerve Conduction Velocities;

and many more; all of the non-invasive function tests that pertain to the nervous system.  Then I was to opine on the findings.  

            The smart docs followed my recommendations.  I am not trying to sound conceited, but when you’re as good as I am . . . well, it’s hard to be humble . . .  Are you buying that, Patient Reader?  I know y’all understand.  

            Anyway, there is a reason why I was given these responsibilities, as well as being the Neurodiagnostics Lab’s supervisor, at the ripe old age of twenty-one.

            As I said, seizure disorder was my specialty.  I could look at the pt’s list of symptoms or a well-written description of an observed seizure, and accurately predict what was going on, neurologically speaking.  

            Sometimes the EEG’s were there just to go through the motions, at least in my own view.  Sure, they’re necessary to establish a hard record of what I already knew was going on but still . . .  I am good when it comes to my professional life. 

            My personal life, however . . .  well, I’ll just tell the rest of the story, and you can see for yourselves.

            After dropping Fonda off in the safe custody of her diminutive buddies, I told her I had to get back to work.

“Will you come by later and meet Amanda?  She’s my roommate . . .” she asked me.

            “Sure.  I get off at four-thirty.”

            I did not realize it then, but as I look back on the Fonda chapter of my life, I realize that it was that day, that precise moment in time there on the 5^th Floor and possibly for the first time in my life, that I had fallen in love.

End of Part II; more to follow soon, Patient Reader

So perhaps I will see you tomorrow?  Splendid!  Until then,

Always I remain,

The Cunning Fennec Fox