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Another Sad Case......

The doctor usually came in to the patient area happy, upbeat, humming a tune - saying how are my patients - my wonderful specimens - looking around at the usual crew, Q (real name Stanislas), Synderman (real name Pryzwara), Nurse Amanda, Xena ...But today...the doctor sat in the lounge area of the waiting room, distracted, sipping water hastily from a cup, staring at the storm-drenched window as Q and Snyderman (whose name was really Pryzwara) played a silent hand at cards. Q could not but notice the disconcerted air on the part of the good doctor and intervened... "Rough day at the office - doc?" - "Well it should be fine... I apologize, should, be really... sorry... it's just this patient of mine - a sad case you might say..." - "Too many of those to speak of - these days - eh?" - "Yes...you might say that. Oh I'm not usually affected by the array of cases - strange you know that I should react this way..."  - "And what was his (or her) situation like - if I may be so bold?"  - "Oh... a typical scenario... a client in physical distress, without family supports, and unable to live alone or take care of themselves - subsisting in a state of squalor, suffering from delusions, isolated and erratic, on the verge of being evicted..." -  "A terrible thing no doubt..." - Synderman - the stroke survivor who had glimpsed angelic beings while clinically dead for 3 minutes once,  - blurted out in his half-demented-sounding, oracular manner... "and yet my sources tell me, all is not lost, even for one such as -..." "You and your angelic intelligences - working at break-neck speed to rescue all of humanity!" "Forgive my friend - dear doctor... An unfortunate series of developments which you describe... And will there be a place for this person at this fine institution?" - "I suppose... they won't quite end up living on the street." - "Well - that's good news...Not cause for celebration then?" - "Oh - I don't know - it brings me back to the same set of conclusions that I... sorry - I..." "Oh no, no - please, continue..." "Let us just say that despite many interventions - our patient relapsed into his prior irrational behaviors... it was a failure on our part you might say - the brain chemistry was too strong..." - "Ah yes - the brain chemistry, a deterministic universe if I understand you correctly..." - "I don't mean to sound here like a radical neuro-scientist - it's just that in this profession one encounters so many clients who for whatever reason - are unable to change - who go down the same spiral of adversity... Q was ecstatic at this point of agreement... "Doctor ...as it happens, these reflections of your happen to touch upon an issue very much at the forefront of my preoccupations..." - "So - you too grapple with this sense of determinism..." "If I could - say it another way - when we look at how the trajectory of living plays out for people - living in modern society - I emphasize modern b/c we don't put it on earlier societies to have even measured this problems in eras where life expectancy was so limited -  it seems to me that the demographics, the sheer #' of bad outcomes as become an issue for us - in view of our modern promises to ourselves - given that we are seeing too many "cases" ending badly in states of despair, isolation, addiction, psychosis and any myriad of other afflictions." - "So - if I understand you - you're dwelling upon the statistics - comparing "successful" to "unsuccessful" outcomes..." - "Not to quantify matters too much, doctor, but -" It was here that Synderman interjected - "I really must raise a point..." and was scary adamant as was most like him: "it seems to me that you are perhaps in danger of "measuring" a person's outcome as we say by the sadness of their final days or months - thereby ignoring entire vistas of time when they were active, engaged, even happy - when life was compelling for them...It is misleading to only look at the point of death..." - "A good point, a good point..." Q had to admit... Such sadness though - how to justify it all whether on the point of death or before...It made him think of those philosophers who wondered about alternate worlds and the infinity of matter disposing itself in all possible ways - If this was a universe full of tragic outcomes - the one next door perhaps had a lesser gradation and so on to infinity - Would that be a source of consolation for anyone?

The other patients were wandering back in at this point... including C  - a fabulist who claimed all manner of  absurd self-aggrandizements and today it was: "I have revolutionized jazz music... I have invented the jazz form and revolutionized it..." This was too much - even for Synderman - who politely, very politely reminded him: "My good fellow - jazz is a rarefied form - with a limited following... but to say it was you - on you own - who created an entire lexicon of music - is far-fetched in the extreme..."


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