Having said that I don't want to commit myself to things like weekly assignments, I am participating in
Judi's May Arty Essay.
Why? Well, for a few reasons. None of which I'm going to explain
here. The essay is long enough without lots of other verbiage.
Now, for those of you who don't know about the essay for this month, you can click on the
link.
Basically, Judi has listed 33 words and asked that we pick at least 3
of the 33 and include them in an essay, prose, poetry, non-fiction,
fiction, etc. I chose to write using all 33.
I'd like to extend a tip-of-the-hat to
Anne of Saturday's Child, for her post on
phobias.
In unrelated matters, she is in need of all our prayers, warm thoughts,
and positive energies. Please let her know she is in our hearts.
OK....here's the essay:
I reached for my packes of
alka-seltzer (plop-plop, fizz-fizz,
oh! whatta relief it is). This was gonna be a hella night. My
secretary, medical transcriber, and other office staff had been long
gone for the day. All was quiet inside my office, with the exception
of my constant muttering.
A single desk lamp lighted my appointment book and a list of patients'
names. Some how, I was going to need to figure a way to schedule
everyone, while taking into account their main diagnoses so that I did
not have people with conflicting ailments in the waiting room. I fel
as though I were staring into an
abyss, with seemingly no way to anchor myself on firmer ground. This was a logistical problem of
palatial magnitude.
This was no way for a therapist to feel, especially when contemplating
something as mundane as the scheduling of clients. Surely there was a
way to make all this
feasible. The problem presented was that
some of my clients have some rather severe phobias hat would be
exacerbated when presented with other clients' habits.
For instance, one patient indulges in
apodyopsis, staring intently at strange women as though undressing them with his mind's eye. Last week as he was leaving, a
neophyte
to counseling was arriving for her appointment. Little did I know then
that she suffers from ophthalmophobia. Bu, I hardly blame folks for
staring at her, as she has a nervous disorder called
tarantism, which manifests itself with impulse to dance at all times. She
titters self-consciously,
making it extremely difficult to ignore her eccentric behavior so that
we can focus on the root of the problem. I can only imagine how
arduous she must feel, as well as how exhausted those around her must
be.
Sometimes, I feel that I am surrounded by those who suffer some inner malady; it is truly
barbarous.
On the other hand, as Millie, my secretary points out, I am a
therapist. Even she has a disorder, where in she will sometimes lapse
into
mytacism, especially on Mondays. So I am really glad that
she is not here to hear me muttering. Turning back to the charts
before me, I continue with the
runcation of those clients with
incompatible diagnoses. I'd really rather they were not scheduled for
the same day, let alone the same morning or afternoon.
If I did not know better, I'd say my life is a
farcical.
Frankly, it does provide plenty of comic-relief, although funds
certainly aren't raised for any such worthy cause. For example, my
schedule includes a
gongoozler who relocated to here from England and can find no canals to observe. Also, there is the
dompteuse,
not to be confused with a dominatrix (although, in the animal kingdom,
that is exactly what she is). My medical transcriber has already
fumbled that
malapropism. She also confuses
mastication with masturbation. Fortunately, the
connotation clues me in, pointing me in the right direction. Besides, those little quirks remind me to be a little less the
Bombastic Therapist and to let my human nature shine through a bit. Surely, that cannot be
fallacious on my part to want my clients to realize that I am human, too.
Given the staff and myself, I feel rather
serendipitous in that we all get along so very well. I must admit The Mighty
Oracles (graduate-school
professors) warned that the chances of us finding or fostering such
good working relationships with staff were slim to none. However, I
feel that
ascendant fertilization is enriching my professional
and social life with my staff. Sometimes, we do get together for an
evening in my secretary's home. She plays the
bassoon wonderfully well. My medical transcriber brings her pet
aardvark and shares her
adoxography with us. Those make for interesting gatherings, to say the least.
To get back to my patient list, I have a female client who so fears other females (gynophobia), that she is employed by a
haberdashery.
That usually works just fine for her, unless a wife comes in to the
store to buy her husband a tie, cuff links, or some such thing. Then
my patient does not feel so
fortuitous.
Another patient cannot eat, nor indeed bear the sight of, acidic fruit. Oranges, lemons, grapefruit,
pineapples, kumquat,
and the like trigger her acerophobia.
Rutabaga, potatoes, turnips,
yams, and other tubers are safe for her to ingest. However, one cannot
live on roots alone. We've begun to work toward eaing such things as
farctates,
cruciferous, and crudites. Some of those vegetables seem to be working
well. At least she does not suffer from lachanophobia. Or worse, she
could fear food and eating entirely, having cibophobia, sitophobia,
and/or sitiophobia.
