The Specialist Appointment by Shirley Read-Jahn
Parkinson's Disease, a horrible, cruel illness that struck her from out of nowhere. She had the rigidity kind, called a movement disorder, not the tremor kind. She called it a boutique illness in that its manifestations seemed to affect every sufferer in a different way. With her, she was nauseous all the time, rather like the hormonal sickness she'd felt when expecting a baby. Life had become quite a struggle to move easily, particularly with her walking, where her feet would freeze and get stuck to the ground. She'd learned to retrain her brain by counting to four out loud and was usually thus able to press on. She had been diagnosed for seven years but knew she'd had the wretched disease for nine. Her specialist, a doctor who hadn't seemed interested in her since her first visit, also had his office far from where she lived. She'd not seen him for three years—hard to get an appointment. Hard to even reach his office; he tended to relocate quite frequently. He never phoned to see if she needed anything, or even to offer a follow-up appointment. She knew she needed to find another specialist, not only because he was too far away for her to get to easily, but also in that she was much older, and her rigidity was progressing. Her general practitioner said there was no-one in her immediate rural area who could help her. Not believing him and being a persistent woman with a life-long nickname of "Bulldog," she set her chin to persist in finding a specialist in her local town. Then came the happy day when she heard about just such a doctor who was not only working in geriatrics but specifically in Parkinson's Disease.
"Good morning", she said to the receptionist who answered the specialist's phone, "I'd like to make an appointment with the doctor."
"Oh yes, lovely, only she's fully booked up till the end of next year."
The patient responded, "Is that so? Well, then, please put me on her list in case anyone calls to cancel their appointment and I could take their place."
"Sorry, but that wouldn't work. There's a long list for just that. Anyway, you'd first need to have your GP send in a referral and then you'd have to be triaged over the phone. All of that takes time, but we do have the time anyway, because as I've said, you couldn't see her till the end of next year."
The patient hung up the phone with a deep sigh. Picking it up again, she rang her GP and arranged for a referral to be sent over anyway to the private surgery rooms of the Parkinson's Disease specialist in the town near her. A week passed by.
"Hello, I'm an RN from your local public hospital and I've been asked by a Parkinson's specialist to triage you over the phone."
"Wonderful!" The patient thought quickly. Better not tell this nurse I do a lot of exercise, or she may think my wish for an appointment isn't that urgent. But the nurse was persistent.
"People with PD need to exercise a lot, to keep the disease at bay—so what is it exactly that you do for exercise?"
"Um, well, I have an exercise bike, I play ping pong, and I teach belly dance."
"What's that? Belly dance? But I see here on my records you just turned 81, and you say you play table tennis AND teach belly dance?"
The nurse was silent after my soft, "Yes!" Eventually, she said,
"Well, the triage is now on record, but I'm afraid I still can't give you an appointment. I'll be in touch eventually."
Hanging up the phone, the patient sighed deeply, again.
Not thirty minutes later, the phone rang.
"This is the nurse again. What I failed to tell you was that the specialist herself was sitting next to me while you and I were talking and you were on speaker phone. After I'd hung up from you, she told me, 'Call that lady back. This I have to see, someone with Rigidity Parkinson's who's teaching belly dance! Get her an appointment next week, not in my private rooms but in the public hospital where I will bulk-bill her [where the government not the patient pays the doctor the few hundred dollars for the initial consultation], and furthermore, tell her I'd also like her to give me a belly dance class!'"
Within just a few days, the patient was seated with her husband in the doctor's office at the public hospital. She received two hours of the doctor's valuable time. She was knowledgeable, kind, interested in everything about her patient, asked her many, many questions, had her move around to show her how she walked, re-organised her medications, made an appointment for her to return the following February—again in a bulk-billed capacity—and at the end, requested her belly dance lesson. For a few seconds, the patient thought she hadn't really meant it, but no, she wanted her lesson. Holding hands, up they stood—the specialist and her patient—and for a short, wonderful few moments, they danced together—their arms now flying high up in the air, their hips gyrating, their bellies moving rhythmically. I defy you to say a Parkinson's patient who has trouble walking couldn't possibly dance. Certainly, nor would that specialist, not for one single, absolutely magical moment!
Omphala belly dancing at Rakkasah West California Belly Dance Festival
