TheBanyanTree: The news from the orthopedist

[Tobie Shapiro]

May 1, 2000000006


Dear buddy bones,

	I saw the orthopedist this morning.  They have a busy office. 
Everyone is doing the grand drag step, or has something in a cast. 
There are crutches and ace bandages and canes.  And here's the weird 
thing:  The door to the examination rooms is very stubborn and hard 
to open from either direction.  You have to pull hard or push hard, 
and when you get it open, it tries its best to close quickly on you 
(maybe if it cuts you in half they can book you for two people).  And 
I wondered as I watched the victims of injuries struggle with the 
trick door.  Who planned this?  And if it wasn't planned, who let it 
stay that way?  Why don't they at least have a door stop to keep it 
open so no one gets hurt?  I thought of the borderline personalities 
with not so latent sadistic tendencies who sit behind the front 
reception station, getting some sort of satisfaction out of viewing 
the staggering and wrestling with the door every day.  Do they 
snicker?  Or are they so used to it that they're impatient with the 
patients?

	Dr. Debonham is a sweet older man, tall as you can be without 
being a conversation piece, and he wears herringbone tweed jackets 
with black natty slacks.  He has a long face, criss-crossed with 
smile lines and worry lines, so I gather he has a rich inner life. 
By the time he came into the examination room, I had managed to crawl 
and claw my way up onto the table and had both legs stretched out, 
the famous air cast still on, just in case he needed to comment on 
its proper use.  He stretched out his hand to shake mine.  We shook. 
He took out the X-rays and mounted them on his wall light box. 
"Nothing broken," he assured me.  It is a sprain, though.  Let's take 
a look at it.  Take off your cast and the socks and shoes off of both 
feet."  He twisted the good foot and twisted the bad.  And damned if 
there wasn't a difference!  With the bad foot, when he twisted it, 
there was a groan in the room.  He checked it for mobility, but not 
for strength.  I guess he knew about the strength part.  Why bother?

	It's still quite swollen, and painful, and difficult to live 
with, but at least it's not broken.  Now, when I put weight on it and 
it hurts, I don't have to worry that I'm crushing a bone, or 
increasing a fracture like you can do on a ceramic bowl if you grasp 
it on either side of the hairline fracture and pull it apart.  Or 
like the poor prehistoric squirrel does to the ice shelf when he 
whaps that acorn into the ground.

	I am locomoting with difficulty, but happier at it.  And it's 
really just a short little problem compared to what heights true 
tsoris can achieve.  I'm supposed to start taking the air cast off 
for periods of time, and the healing is measured in weeks, not hours 
or days.  Next week this time, I'll drag a little less and maybe I'll 
be able to open a sadistic door and hold it open with my bad foot. 
It's a dream, anyway.

	Here's to dreams,

	Love,

	Tobie
-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net