visitors

a day nurse: progress notes on intakes

Conducting intake paperwork today, a familiar answer appeared while taking a doll's personal history for the file. Indeed another reminder that psychopathology is, in its three-part etymological root, the story of the suffering of the soul.

The question was, in so many words: what happened to you?

The answer was, exactly: "i don't know."

--

meds

a night nurse: on wounds

It seems that some dolls are hurt here before they are healed. At first this concerned me. Some of our patients arrive with obvious ailments, but dolls being robust in their loyalty to living as our stickler little mirrors, their wounds are largely unseen. The untrained eye might think these dolls were simply worse for wear, like anybody who has lived to be a certain age. (The other nurses and I often joke that we well understand that concept; seems we're less (and less) spry with each new sunrise.)

I fear that my painting of contusions, reddened sclera, and other so-called gore might seem on the surface contradictory, or even potentially a sadistic justification for our hospital's existence shrouded in transparent theatrics. Embarrassing. But on the contrary! (I think.) It is a method of treatment here. We hear stories and take the pulse of the pain. And so on. We birth the healing forward for them.

As disturbing as it is for me to manipulate the unfolding visual manifestation of their tales, for the patients themselves I am finding there is an expressed (or tacit) feeling of relief. Other emotions too, but indeed a palpable relief.

--

worn

Our patients remember their age, particularly when it has been celebrated or otherwise marked in their past, but more often we notate ages as rough estimations based on a complicated series of calculations.

--

mobile clinic: come one come all

--

a night nurse: on sooth and soothe

Lucy is sleeping soundly after her cataract surgery and soothing bath. Since she arrived, she has never looked so relaxed.

We are coming to realize here at the hospital how much of our care involves actions one might categorize under the heading of mere 'grooming.' Not so! Nurture, nurture. Simple dignities.

All the pants-less are now pantsed.

--

a day nurse: paperwork

summary notes for the files:

1 - facilitated the ever-growing amputee support group. provided education on why this hospital does not supply nor promote prosthesis.

2 - anastazja swallowed her national pride when her colorful frock needed to be sliced in the emergency room for easier access. we let her keep her kerchief in surgery. currently sedated.

3 - completed and charted treatment plans for all our new patients.

4 - it was a hard call on whether or not to save ms. bright's orange hair. decided no.

5 - wendy asked the others for a signing of her leg cast. silence.

6 - it seems penelope belden is too stiff for traction.

7 - heavy bleaching during the laundering of several stained gowns. success!

8 - caught up with paperwork for the archive of bruises.

9 - one of the miniature girls, in an apparent fit of mania perhaps brought on by her meds (note: take her off the good and plenty), started her own version of the archives. perhaps it will help her make some friends on the ward.

a night nurse: just another night on the ward

the ward is all quiet now. eyes long closed for some, but even the little open eyes have dimmed themselves in that way that they dim, a nightly conservation of energy while they continue to watch the world around them breathing. aware of subtle movements, the hum of the night light; nothing isn't worthy.

--

clean

Let's not fool ourselves about sterility. We do sanitization in the form of good old-fashioned soap.

Here the cups, plates, saucers, et al. are being sudsed up for meal time.

--

esteemed colleagues, respect

Irving D. Chais, Manhattan Doll Surgeon, Dies at 83

Irving D. Chais, who in his 45 years as the owner and chief surgeon of the New York Doll Hospital in Manhattan reattached thousands of heads, arms and legs; reimplanted fake hair shorn by scissor-wielding toddlers; and soothed the feelings of countless doll lovers, young and old, died on April 24 in Manhattan. He was 83 and lived in Manhattan.

In a cluttered, brightly lighted second-floor workshop at 787 Lexington Avenue, between 61st and 62nd Streets, Mr. Chais and two other doll doctors had hunched over operating tables (well, work benches) since 1965. Stacked nearby were boxes labeled “hands,” “fingers,” “wrists,” “wigs,” “German eyes,” “French eyes,” “American eyes.” Lining the shelves and piled in boxes were thousands of dolls, new and antique, from as far away as Afghanistan and China. Some were the size of a clothespin, others as large as a 4-year-old child.

1987, when a New York Times reporter wandered into the hospital, a 70-year-old teddy bear had recently been checked in, the victim of a dog attack. It was missing its nose, eyes and fistfuls of stuffing. It probably cost its original owner $5, but the current owner had agreed to pay $350 for its extensive surgery.

“We reconstructed the whole bear, and it looks fantastic,” Mr. Chais said at the time. “People get very attached to these things. Sometimes you have dolls and animals that have been in the family for five and six generations.”

The New York Doll Hospital had been in Mr. Chais’s family since the early 1900s, located at three other sites on the Upper East Side before moving into the walk-up at 787 Lexington. It started as a beauty parlor and wig store owned by a distant relative who had refurbished her own childhood dolls and was soon receiving requests from customers who wanted their own huggable toys repaired. Mr. Chais, who had worked in the family business since 1945, bought it from his sister Ann Lancet in the early 1960s and continued to run it until a month ago.

“From plush to plastic, we fix it,” Mr. Chais said in 1993, pointing out that he was as likely to be repairing a 19th-century automaton as a Barbie. He said a 90-year-old man had recently come in with a Popeye doll he really cared about. “It was like he was a 6-year-old kid.”

On Thursday Mr. Chais’s daughter Alison was at the hospital waiting for the last few dozen customers to pick up their repaired loved ones. The hospital will close by the end of May, she said.

“We’ve been in business since 1900,” Mr. Chais told The Times in 1990, “and never lost a patient yet.

---

waiting room

While our hospital undergoes construction, our patients wait...patiently. Right now, barely a peep.

Earlier a nurse noticed our big floppy girl patient named Angel, the one with the smudged "hug me" written on her apron, was frightened, lingering alone on the table, looking away from the others. She expressed worry that she carried jumpers in that plush head of hair. Examination proved negative.

Upon gentle inquiry, she then asked politely for more contact. Several others piled on (along with our resident therapy cat) and the pressure/weight helped her immediately. We have noted this response of the limbic system several times with our patients and believe it is linked to somatic memory regarding toyboxes and closets.

--

a found poem

Touring the Doll Hospital

Why so many senseless injuries? This one's glass teeth
knocked out. Eyes missing, or stuck open or closed.
Limbs torn away. Sawdust dribbles onto the floor
like an hourglass running out. Fingerless hands, noses
chipped or bitten off. Many are bald or burnt. Some,
we learn, are victims of torture or amateur surgery.
Do dolls invite abuse, with their dent-able heads,
those tight little painted-on or stitched-in grins?
Hurt me, big botched being, they whine in a dialect
only puritans and the frequently punished can hear.
It's what I was born for. I know my tiny white pantaloons
and sheer underskirts incite violation. Criers and crib-
wetters pursue us in dreams, till we wake sweat-
drenched but unrepentant, glad to have the order
by which we lord over them restored. Small soldiers
with no Geneva Conventions to protect them,
they endure gnawing, being drooled on, banishment
to attics. Stained by cough syrup, hot cocoa, and pee,
these "clean gallant souls" wear their wounds as martyrs'
garments. We owe them everything. How they suffer
for our sins, "splintered, bursted, crumbled . . ."
Every bed in the head replacement ward is occupied
tonight. Let's sit by the legless Queen doll's tiny
wheelchair and read for her awhile if she wishes it.
In a faint voice she requests a thumbleful of strong dark tea.

~

(by Amy Gerstler, from Ghost Girl, Penguin 2004)

equinox egg glossary, lobby:

1. nearing the latch
2. can't/won't
3. the nocturnal hum
4. quiet ticking
17. swallow your pride
15. exceptionally mild
14. rare findings
13. protection
12. both outside and within
7. suspended in nurture
11. botched belonging
10. reflects the breed
8. soft-cooked future
9. diminutive riot
6. declining probability
5. tick tock
16. if not:

--

patient #1, born bruised