Fonda and the Cunning Fennec Fox Part II

15 April, 2014
0845 hrs

            Good morning, Patient Reader.  Thanks for the overwhelming response to my last few postings, especially the kind comments on the Fonda story which, in my opinion, deserves to be told.  Must be told.  I hope that in its conclusion, you will agree.  

            That is not to say that this posting is the conclusion (far from it, I fear) but yet the next installment.  I hope you share this story with your friends et al; not for me, but for the good woman's memory.  Fonda was kind and sweet; something that is in short supply in this shitty world.

            Hey, don't get mad at me for the pictures. This is what we do to ourselves thousands of times a day, all over the world.  This is what humans are.  This is that of which we are capable . . .

            So without further adieu, here is Part II of the saga of Fonda and the Cunning Fennec Fox . . .  Are you ready?
Splendid!

Fonda and the Cunning Fennec Fox

Part 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 her 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