May's Artsy Essay

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.