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Sundance Film festival. My third pilgrimage there this past winter, I was starting the car to drive home from the late show, about 1 am, 10 degrees outside. A women neatly bundled in a long dark black wool coat, red scarf wraped around her face waited patiently under a streetlight. Vapor froze in a rising fog with each breath she took. The buses run until after the late show, but not frequently enough in this kind of cold.
She looked harmless enough, perhaps having a few years on me. I invited her in for a lift to her hotel which was in town near mine. Was her accent from England? No, she was from South Africa, I from Portland, Oregon, the usual verbal icebreakers as the heat in the car was also taking the chill out of the air. She wondered whether I knew Dr. so and so whom she knew from South Africa.
In fact, I had met him some 6 years before I moved out to Portland and now his practice is a stones throw from mine. Of course, I would say hello, the next time we met.
*****
On another note at Sundance, I had the opportunity to answer that infamous question, "Is there a doctor in the house?"
You may never have been to a film festival, but experimental, offbeat films are the engine of the festival. Its like eating at the local restaurants when one travels. You take the good with the bad, sometimes the memorably bad. Or else you eat at McDonalds and watch big Hollywood films - you know what you are getting (maybe).
A Place on Earth - A black & white film by Aristakisyan, a Moldavian director who brings you in stark black and white a hippie commune in Moscow. It could be anywhere in the world he says. There are certainly some redeeming humanitarian qualities to the characters. The film is an insight into a lifestyle that no doubt exists and a lifestyle I would not wish to experience any way other than through the vicariousness of film. I learned about Crack Cocaine in “MacArthur Park” last year and felt the same way.
Over half the audience left early. One poor young man didn’t leave in time and when the charismatic leader of the commune castrates and de-penis’s himself, that cry rang out, “Is there a doctor in the house?”
I got up and found a young, 25ish clean cut fellow in a sand colored dress sweater. He was leaning back in his seat with a slightly vaporous look on his face. His girlfriend sitting beside him was beside herself, asking him what he was doing. He didn’t remember anything unusual going on, but knew his name and where he was.
“I feel ok” he said, tentatively.
He had a palpable radial pulse.
I sat back down, but by now the movie had stopped.
After a minute, a nurse had gone to him and recommended an ER visit.
I walked back to check on him.
“I’m fine now,” though he had not moved from the slightly slouched position he was in before.
Placing a hand on his forehead, he was now cold and clammy. It is always men who pass out in my experience. One wants to be careful because when the legs fill with blood and the spirit starts to leave your body, you may twitch a bit. It is quite scary for loved ones watching and I have had my hand in a young mans mouth once when he passed out and his teeth really clamped down on my fingers.
“I know you want to believe you are better sooner than you really are, so why don’t we have you lay down on the floor.” I suggested.
“Should we walk him outside?” someone in the background queried.
“No, then we will have him laying down, right in the middle of the aisle, in a heap.” I responded. This past year I have twice sat near fainters in a too warm church as they tried to get up and leave the house of the lord to relieve that sense of ill-foreboding washing down over their bodies.
I skipped breakfast once, went for a run and then took a hot shower. I felt the spirit leave my brain and head for my legs. There was nowhere to go but down. I let myself slump knowing I would go completely out and hit hard otherwise.
Supine positioning was just the thing. I asked for a wet towel and moments later thick white Marriott hand towels arrived.
I guessed, I really was the attending physician now, so I requested a glass of orange juice. This was Sundance - a rather wired group and we were watching the film at the Marriott hotel. The Sundance volunteer spoke in her headset and moments later, a black and white clad waiter appeared with a lovely glass of fresh squeezed orange juice perched in the middle of a large serving tray. I was impressed that physician’s orders were honored much more rapidly here than at any hospital I have ever worked at.
He was sitting up when the paramedics arrived, O2 saturation 99%, generally feeling much better after the OJ.
The film resumed, though I didn’t make it to the end. No doubt there is a great deal of pathology in society and there is some that I still haven’t seen - even in Moldavia.
*****
I never have bought a pass to the films at Sundance. I just get in lines and usually get a ticket somehow. Actually, waiting in the lines is an opportunity to meet all kinds of people - it's a diverse crowd. Late in the week, I was waiting with my friends for one of the big films at the large high school auditorium, a sea of humanity waiting to get in. The gates opened after awhile and we gradually squeezed through the auditorium doors.
I heard a voice call out, “Jim Thomas.”
I looked around, though with a name like mine, it's like reaching for your cell phone when one rings, it's not yours going off.
In the dim light it took me a few moments and there, where I had just passed, was a woman standing against the carpeted wall. It was a voice that I recognized. Wendy Wehr, my steady girlfriend from college, the one that I left when I went to medical school (20 years have gone by!!!!!). Well, I'm the one who left, so I can't say there were any exciting moments, but we did talk.
She had heard my voice out in the lobby. She could have chosen not to say anything. I wonder how often I have been somewhere and someone who knows me hasn't spoken up. In a science fiction sort of way, it would be quite interesting to be in a dark theatre with a device like a black light that could light up everyone who was less that 6 degrees of separation from you. Short of that device being developed, I'll have to rely on lifes darn coincidences that plague my life.
On many days in my office, three patients will all have the same disease that I haven't seen for months, three patients will all be from the same town far away on the same day, two people will have the same name on the same day.
It is a small world. If you hear me in line at Sundance this year, give me a yell, I'll be happy to renew our acquaintance.
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