OUTSIDE THE OFFICE
Being the Music Colleen Foy Sterling, MD
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elp im in heaven with no dance partner I opened the text cautiously, not recognizing the author. Choosing my words carefully, I wrote back: “Who are you? Where are you?â€? Sorry I’m in new orleans at jazz fest. Hope to dance with you soon. Now that made sense. Don’s messages are like that, cryptic, dry and terse. Not at all like the man himself. Don is a person who has truly come through tragedy and danced his way to the other side. Most would fear what he has had to endure. 7KH Ă€UVW WLPH , GDQFHG ZLWK 'RQ at Monroe Hall in Santa Rosa, I was a QHRSK\WH Ă€JKWLQJ GHSUHVVLRQ EXUQout and nasty dizzy spells. I was still very much in my “I’ll wait for someone to ask me to danceâ€? mode. A guy I had QHYHU PHW VOLG DFURVV WKH ZRRGHQ Ă RRU stopped right in front of me and held out his upturned hand. I took it, and ZH VWDUWHG D ZDOW] , IHOW FRQĂ€GHQW $V a child, I had roller-skated around the garage listening to my Grampa Phil’s waltz records on the Victrola. As a young adult, I had played waltz after waltz on a baritone horn. This time Tom Rigney and Flambeau were playing “The Yearning Heart,â€? which is just right for a sad girl at a dance hall. I counted my onetwo-threes and felt like I was doing a pretty good job. “Lean into my handâ€?, Don muttered during the straightaway just before a corner, “If you don’t lean your back into my hand, we lose the connection, and I can’t lead!â€? I felt my FRQĂ€GHQFH VHHS RXW , ZDVQ¡W JRLQJ WR Dr. Foy Sterling, a family physician, serves on the SCMA Editorial Board.
Sonoma Medicine
is impossible to worry about anything. Dancing is the meditation that comes with making music, but this time you are the music. After the last pull of Tom Rigney’s ERZ RQ WKH Ă€GGOH WKH ZDOW] ZDV RYHU and we slumped down hard on the wooden benches that line the walls of Monroe, a traditional dance hall. I leaned back and Don leaned forward to adjust his boot, or so I thought. When I looked, I saw that Don had simple and well-worn dress shoes. I heard the familiar sound of a snap and re-snap, as he adjusted something near his knee. It was a sound I had heard many times years ago, on a rotation at a VA hospital. The Nutcracker. Photo by Dr. Foy Sterling. It took a moment to locate the be good at this. But I didn’t have time sound in my memory. I looked at Don, for negative thinking. and he looked up and very matter-ofI leaned back into his hand and sur- factly said, “My prosthetic.â€? Laughing, rendered all that I had learned in my he went on. “Yeah, motorcycle accident. FDUHHU %H FRQĂ€GHQW 6WDQG RQ \RXU RZQ I was at Petaluma Valley Hospital for a two feet! Be a leader! In this second, I couple of months. They tried to save my had to be a follower; I had to depend foot, but it didn’t work. They gave me on someone else. As I leaned into Don’s an epidural so I wouldn’t get phantom hand, I felt support against my upper pain, and a few days later I had the back. Like a ride at the fair, we took that surgery.â€? corner going what felt like 90 miles an I didn’t say anything; I just listened. hour. I couldn’t help but giggle with the “In physical therapy I started to walk QHUYRXV WKULOO , WULHG WR UHPHPEHU WR Ă€[ as soon as I could, then I went down my gaze on a spot, as we spun around the hall and found a friend of mine I each other and Don opened me into a knew from the dance hall and I waltzed turn, within a turn (as a pair), around with her right back into the PT room. D WXUQ WKH FRUQHU RI WKH GDQFH Ă RRU Everyone was amazed! I was a dancer I tried to wrap my brain around the before the accident, and I was deterphysics involved in all those layers of mined to dance as soon as I could after turning, but that is the beauty of dance: my surgery.â€? the music, and the movement, and the mesmerizing meditation. You have to ancing can get you through almost keep your focus on the steps and the anything. But why dance in the balance, and on your frame as an indi- Ă€UVW SODFH" , DP SUHWW\ VXUH WKDW VRPH vidual and as a pair. When dancing, it readers are already murmuring, “Not
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Summer 2012 39