Christy Brown and Others.
My Left Foot.
Christy Brown.
I stood there, a lone medical student, at the bottom of bed number thirty-six. I had been dispatched to do my first solo history and physical examination. Of course I had done many before, but always as part of a team or with at least one other student or intern.
Lying on the bed was a young man, about my age writhing in spastic, athethoid movement, neck extended and rigid contractures of the arms and legs and a more shocking example of the physical misfortunes than I had ever seen. He seemed to totally lack any sort of control over his body, until my shocked eyes fell on his left lower extremity. Between the big toe and the second toe of his left foot he was holding a pen, and despite the spastic movements of the rest of his body, he was writing in a small , precise cursive hand (foot!) on a stabilized notebook. It was amazing to watch.
After I got over the shock of seeing a human being who seemed to be dealing in some way with the unimaginable devastation, I managed to pull myself together and said apprehensively, " I'm Stan Smith, a medical student, and they sent me down to take a history and do a physical examination. Is that alright?" He nodded affirmatively.
The patient, Christy Brown, later internationally known as the author of the book and subject of the movie "My Left Foot," and "Down all the Days" and a number of other books and paintings was kind to an apprehensive new clinical student.
His speech was dysarthric and difficult to understand, his manner kindly. He was obviously used to this teaching hospital routine. I won't attempt to replicate his spastic speech - that would just make him - and me sound stupid!!
"Yes, I know you students have to learn from someone," he replied in the dysarthric staccato drawl.
I was grateful I could understand him and he me.
I took a history of sorts, more social than medical. He told me he nearly died during delivery and that he had suffered serious brain damage. We got on to his life.
Christy was born at the Rotunda Hospital in 1932, - three years before I was born. He had twenty-two siblings, (Yes, 22 !) out of which thirteen lived. His parents were urged to commit him to hospital as he was so spastic, but deferred. He was thought to be mentally impaired and received most of his education from his mother.
"So what do you do most of the time?" I asked him.
" I write," he said. "I've started doing a bit of painting too," he said.
He had a certain leprechaun- ish look about him that precluded an overly sympathetic attitude and made me feel that somehow he was managing to get some fun out of life, as indeed he was. If you want to know how, read "Down all the Days". He was addicted to alcohol, which I am sure brought more to his life than ever took from it. His brothers pulled him around in a cart, mainly to the local pub and fed him Guiness.
Daniel Day Lewis played the role of Christy Brown with great insight and the movie itself kept reasonably close to the facts.
The only other famous 'medical case' I (almost) met in my student days, was Douglas Bader, the legless RAF Air ace, who was a double lower limb amputee as a result of an air crash and talked his way back into combat missions sans legs, until he was shot down and became a prisoner of war. He came to the Meath Hospital to encourage and reassure pediatric amputees regarding their future life, though I don't think he was recommending that they become fighter-pilots!
An even more remote potential patient was Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, who visited Saskatoon many years ago when I was Chair of the Department of Family Medicine and the Emergency Department. Her Majesty, of course, traveled with her own team of Physicians but as their access to all of the facilities of University Hospital had to be through a duly qualified physician with full privileges I was selected and thus I can claim to have been duly appointed Physician to the Queen for two days! Unfortunately, I wasn't smart enough to request a written testimony at the time. Fortunately, Her Majesty and her physicians didn't require my services!!
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