11 November 2013
2207 hrs
Hello Again, Patient Reader:
I’m writing to tell you of the
Acute Case of Foot in Mouth Disease I recently suffered. By recently, we are talking on or around the
31st of October, All Hallow’s Eve and/or Samwain or the such. Take your pick. Even you Xians and your thieving ways had to
go and make 1 November your fricking All Saints Day. Though I must say that I share my birthday
with St. Francis, lover of all critters Great and Small . . . apropos, if you ask me. And if you didn’t ask? Fuck you it’s my blog, right?
Back to the subject at hand,
wherein I chew vigorously upon my size 14 boots:
It was another morning
finished, that gray day. Slowly I turned
. . . step by step . . . Wait, that’s another story.
I was pretty smug-ish that day,
having done well on a Medical Terminology quiz I had recently attacked. I had managed an ACE on the midterm, which
was, intellectually speaking, a Cerebral Erection of raging proportions . . . yes, at 45 I still get those, and not just
from the urge to urinate first thing in the AM.
And some of you may think,
“Well, Biggus Dealus, Smartass. Easy to
ACE when you’re a medical professional, eh?”
Ex-medical professional, may I
remind you. In my defense, (against whom
I do not know, Patient Reader . . . but even Paranoids have enemies, right?) I
spent all of my professional years in Neuro Di- Agnostics , what the hell do I
know between sebaceous and sebhorreic?
Jesus.
At any rate, it turns out I can
still retain as well as maintain . . . wink-wink
nudge-nudge-knowwhuddamean? Turns
out that I did not leave my brains behind all those long years ago . . .
So on the morning in question .
. . well, I’ll tell that story second, as it has a bit more sole in it, gustatorially-speaking. Let us fast-forward to the PM, circa 1400 hrs
where the second faux pas or as they
say in Arkansas, fuck-up, happened.
I was perusing a PowerPoint
presentation, perfunctorily preparing my person, when I came across a typo in
the slides. Athersclerosis is not a word, yet there it was in front of me. I am NOT a snob, folks. I just believe that if an institution
disseminates knowledge, the spelling should be accurate. These are fine, young, malleable minds at
work, here . . . we must fill them with The Voice and Idol and The
Real-Fucking-Housewives of god-knows-where . . .
So I pull aside the Medical
Terminology professor and I point it out.
She considers this for a moment and says, “Thanks, Fennec Fox . . . I think I can go in there and change it . .
.”
Hmmm, I
thought to myself . . . How can she go in
and change it if she doesn’t have the mast- Ohhh . . . Yeah, Patient Readers . . . She wrote the damn thing. There goes my grade, right?
After profuse apologizing on my
part, and repeated comforting assurances on hers, I got up off of her leg,
adjusted my moist trousers, and bid adieu. I think I even backed away, head bowed,
with an occasional genuflection thrown in for good measure. Thankfully, she is the female equivalent of a
mensch, and I benefit greatly from
that. Correcting a professor, and one
who determines fully one-fourth of my GPA this term . . . Sheesh.
Not So Bad, say you, Patient
Reader? Dig THIS one . . .
Earlier in the day, that AM at
0900 hrs or so (to be slightly imprecise), I was speaking to my writing
professor, as she lets the class break for five each day we are with her.
We were speaking in a roomful
of other people speaking fairly loudly amongst themselves, and I was only
half-hearing her through the low din. I
managed to make out “thyroid” and “tumor” and so my attention was caught upon hearing these words.
Instantly doffing the
Diagnostician’s Chapeau, I went into The Zone.
“Hmm,” I nodded with concentration and my best look of quasi-compassion
and well-intentioned erudition, and I asked the appropriate questions regarding
chemo and radioactive iodine.
“Not much of a response to
those, I’m afraid . . .” she said.
Having heard only part of the patient’s history, I figured she was
talking about a friend of similar age say, early sixties or so.
“So, it’s terminal . .
.” I actually said aloud. Yes, I
actually fucking said it out loud. I
used the In-Front-of My-Fucking-Face voice and said, “Terminal.” Terminal!
“Well, we hope not,” she
replied quietly. She looked at a place on the wall behind me, Someplace that was not me upon which to settle her gaze.
I am, for better or worse, an eidetic; in a nutshell, it is akin to someone who has a photographic memory. I like to think I have a pornographic memory, but that's another subject altogether.
Anyway, this type of memory, true or not,
serves me in this fashion: I can recall every
face I've ever seen, and the expressions I have
seen upon it. Not only can I do that, but I can
recognize with ease the emotion behind each,
and I remember those, too. It made me a
better clinician, I think. I never pulled
punches as to the news I had to give, terrible
as it might have been. But I could gauge the state of mind of of the person to whom I was presenting the information, and adjust accordingly. I tried to buffer the truth with compassion, because I was, after all, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, was I not? But as the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, I knew what needed to be told. And Patient Reader, by now you know enough about me to know that Compassion always takes a back seat to Wisdom. Thus is my reason for denying myself Nirvana . . . My way to ease the suffering of another that they may attain Nirvana themselves. Or some such bullshit . . .
Well, the expression on my professor's face immediately changed. In it I saw a melange of emotions: fear, sadness, anger, a certain steadfast and yet weary determination . . . and I shut the fuck up.
I had heard a list of symptoms. I had a puzzle, once again, to solve. It was a long time coming, and rapid the road to prognosis. Once again I was the cold diagnostician, my default, because when you care you feel and when you feel you get hurt. It's inevitable. Pain is the greatest teacher, and from Her you learn the lessons and remember. Damn well better, or you go through it again. Samsara unbroken.
I heard a list of symptoms, and I had a puzzle to solve. Chemo- no response; radioactive iodine and other nuclear medicine- no response; tumor resection at the primary site successful, but with metastases to the lymphatic system . . . My puzzle was simple.
"Who is this again?" I finally asked, both sides of my brain now acute and attentive. "My daughter," she said.
I am not the Bodhisattva of Compassion. I forgot that no matter who the patient was, he or she was close to this woman, my professor whom I respect and admire. I forgot that the other bookend of this puzzle was a human being, fragile and exhausted, hoping and praying and believing, and in a sentence I can deflate the spirit. I wield my diagnostics clumsily, sometimes. I swing from the ego rather than the heart, because I don't know what the heart is anymore. I dream of the heart and awaken in mourning for its loss. Pride got me, damn it. The high surf of acing the midterm. The indestructibility I hadn't felt in too long. They ambushed me, these faults that I carry with me like secrets.
I am not the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, though my intellectual vanity is rendered shredded when I admit this. My SOUL wishes Wisdom to shower over me; leave compassion out of it. Years of watching the world give up on itself allowed in me the decision to just let the feeling go away. Keep the Mind, because puzzles need it, but forget there is a patient in pain on the other side of the symptoms.
Were I wise there would be no intellectual lapse. I would never forget that THEY have it right: Wisdom and Compassion need one another. They are the Yin and the Yang; they are the Light and the Dark. They are our very own left and right hemispheres.
Far from wise, I still learn. I still try to remember what I already know. The Farther I travel, the Less I Know.
She held her first class today since being back from an excellent East-Coast hospital to which her daughter was admitted last week. I asked about her trip, letting her decide how and when to cross the Rubicon into the subject of her daughter. The resection was successful, now that the tumors were big enough to get. But there was metastasis to the lymph nodes in her neck.
"She's not a Cancer Survivor, yet," Dr. -------- (my professor) said to me, "but she will be . . ."
"You bet," I agreed. And I thought to myself, 'you both are already survivors.'
and the Cunning Fennec Fox
serves me in this fashion: I can recall every
face I've ever seen, and the expressions I have
seen upon it. Not only can I do that, but I can
recognize with ease the emotion behind each,
and I remember those, too. It made me a
better clinician, I think. I never pulled
punches as to the news I had to give, terrible
as it might have been. But I could gauge the state of mind of of the person to whom I was presenting the information, and adjust accordingly. I tried to buffer the truth with compassion, because I was, after all, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, was I not? But as the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, I knew what needed to be told. And Patient Reader, by now you know enough about me to know that Compassion always takes a back seat to Wisdom. Thus is my reason for denying myself Nirvana . . . My way to ease the suffering of another that they may attain Nirvana themselves. Or some such bullshit . . .
Well, the expression on my professor's face immediately changed. In it I saw a melange of emotions: fear, sadness, anger, a certain steadfast and yet weary determination . . . and I shut the fuck up.
I had heard a list of symptoms. I had a puzzle, once again, to solve. It was a long time coming, and rapid the road to prognosis. Once again I was the cold diagnostician, my default, because when you care you feel and when you feel you get hurt. It's inevitable. Pain is the greatest teacher, and from Her you learn the lessons and remember. Damn well better, or you go through it again. Samsara unbroken.
I heard a list of symptoms, and I had a puzzle to solve. Chemo- no response; radioactive iodine and other nuclear medicine- no response; tumor resection at the primary site successful, but with metastases to the lymphatic system . . . My puzzle was simple.
"Who is this again?" I finally asked, both sides of my brain now acute and attentive. "My daughter," she said.
I am not the Bodhisattva of Compassion. I forgot that no matter who the patient was, he or she was close to this woman, my professor whom I respect and admire. I forgot that the other bookend of this puzzle was a human being, fragile and exhausted, hoping and praying and believing, and in a sentence I can deflate the spirit. I wield my diagnostics clumsily, sometimes. I swing from the ego rather than the heart, because I don't know what the heart is anymore. I dream of the heart and awaken in mourning for its loss. Pride got me, damn it. The high surf of acing the midterm. The indestructibility I hadn't felt in too long. They ambushed me, these faults that I carry with me like secrets.
I am not the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, though my intellectual vanity is rendered shredded when I admit this. My SOUL wishes Wisdom to shower over me; leave compassion out of it. Years of watching the world give up on itself allowed in me the decision to just let the feeling go away. Keep the Mind, because puzzles need it, but forget there is a patient in pain on the other side of the symptoms.
Were I wise there would be no intellectual lapse. I would never forget that THEY have it right: Wisdom and Compassion need one another. They are the Yin and the Yang; they are the Light and the Dark. They are our very own left and right hemispheres.
Far from wise, I still learn. I still try to remember what I already know. The Farther I travel, the Less I Know.
She held her first class today since being back from an excellent East-Coast hospital to which her daughter was admitted last week. I asked about her trip, letting her decide how and when to cross the Rubicon into the subject of her daughter. The resection was successful, now that the tumors were big enough to get. But there was metastasis to the lymph nodes in her neck.
"She's not a Cancer Survivor, yet," Dr. -------- (my professor) said to me, "but she will be . . ."
"You bet," I agreed. And I thought to myself, 'you both are already survivors.'
and the Cunning Fennec Fox
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