|
Oklahoma City, the capital,
was a musty old town that had been settled in and around the 1890's but
there was a beginning of prosperity because the wide highways were being
built and it was easy to navigate through the different sectors of the
sprawling city. That land area was equal to the city of Los Angeles. At
this time it was 1960. This was before all the crisp, new, renovations
were made in that city.
Renovated old Brick Town:
http://okc.about.com/od/bricktown/ig/Bricktown-in-Pictures/index.htm
Rod's mom had found a doctor whose practice
was in an older house which looked more like a home than an office.
Outside, the architecture was red brick and must have been taken from an
English Tudor style with a decorative-half-timbering, steeply pitched
roof, prominent cross gables and tall, narrow windows which caused the
interior to be dark, needing small lamps for illumination. Inside the
waiting room was all of polished old wood, bookshelves, overstuffed dark
leather furniture and these softly lit amber lamps. It had a masculine
decor and was all in agreement with the elegant, rich, royal feel but, of
course, in a tiny, small way. I felt comfortable as if it was very close
to the warmth and care taken for the decorations in the houses where I
grew up. Dr. Palmer
quietly walked out to where we were sitting, rather than having us enter a
waiting room to speak with him. He was a gentle, kindly man and he
deserved this tinge of royalty in his surroundings. The things he said and
did that day would be like a storehouse of wisdom to guide and direct us
through any other less than astute observations. He was now directing his
attention to Rhonda.
“My! My! What a lovely little Miss' you are. Aren't you beautiful with all
your ruffles on this very pink dress?” He was coaxing the child up into
his arms. “We'll just do an x-ray of her wrist and we will be back in a
little bit, Mom.”
After some more waiting the doctor returned with Rhonda's x-rays and said,
“I’ll show you the x-rays here in some of my books on these shelves behind
us. He was flipping easily through the pages of a heavy looking volume as
if he had done this many times before.”
“I want you to see the x-rays of different
children at various ages and with varying degrees of brain damage. You
see, the wrist tells the story. The level of a development of the bones
show us how the brain in functioning and we can be relatively certain of
the trauma there. Now, after you have looked at these x-rays of other
children, let's compare these to your own daughter's. The bones of her
wrist are relatively well on their way to maturing. Still, she isn't
sitting alone or holding her head up. This tells me, probably, the part of
her brain that is injured is that which controls her motor functions. Her
intelligence and learning ability will not be affected. I will not tell
you that she will never walk. However, if she does walk it will be very
late.” There was a
quiet dignity all about this gentle man. He was in his late seventies and
there was something almost mysterious about him. It was as if a younger,
slender man was somehow trapped but, nevertheless spoke with courage and
will. I couldn't explain it or understand totally what it was I was
feeling. My youth at the time didn’t allow for perceiving circumstances
surrounding a person’s impending death due to the ending of a cycle in
life and living. This may have been part of what gave the man a greater
amount of empathy for us. His assurances rested on me like a calmness to
settle on water after the wind abates. I felt a new unity of mind and
purpose with someone who was, indeed, of a higher intelligence. He gave me
enough hope so that my grieving sorrow could, for the first time, fall
away from me. Many a time there would be treading, in a meaninglessly,
meandering through hopelessness and sadness, but then, my mind always came
back to this quiet place and to the gentle words of a merciful,
compassionate, aging man, who happened to be a physician. This, more than
once, gave me the will to continue to do all that had to be done, thus,
overlooking and not worrying about what could not be done for my child. |
