The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hatstand by Acampo GmbH

Author:Acampo GmbH [GmbH, Acampo]
Format: epub

13 Yes, Father-Sister

Mrs B., a former research chemist, had presented with a rapid personality change, becoming ‘funny’

(facetious, given to wisecracks and puns), impulsive—and ‘superficial’ (‘You feel she doesn’t care about you,’ one of her friends said. ‘She no longer seems to care about anything at all.’) At first it was thought that she might be hypomanic, but she turned out to have a cerebral tumor. At craniotomy there was found, not a meningioma as had been hoped, but a huge carcinoma involving the orbitofrontal aspects of both frontal lobes.

When I saw her, she seemed high-spirited, volatile—’a riot’ (the nurses called her)—full of quips and cracks, often clever and funny.

‘Yes, Father,’ she said to me on one occasion.

‘Yes, Sister,’ on another.

‘Yes, Doctor,’ on a third.

She seemed to use the terms interchangeably.

‘What am I?’ I asked, stung, after a while.

‘I see your face, your beard,’ she said, ‘I think of an Archimandrite Priest. I see your white uniform—I think of the Sisters. I see your stethoscope—I think of a doctor.’

‘You don’t look at all of me?’

‘No, I don’t look at all of you.’

‘You realize the difference between a father, a sister, a doctor?’

‘I know the difference, but it means nothing to me. Father, sister, doctor—what’s the big deal?’

Thereafter, teasingly, she would say: ‘Yes, father-sister. Yes, sister-doctor’, and other combinations.

Testing left-right discrimination was oddly difficult, because she said left or right indifferently (though there was not, in reaction, any confusion of the two, as when there is a lateralizing defect of perception or attention). When I drew her attention to this, she said: ‘Left/right. Right/left. Why the fuss? What’s the difference?’

‘Is there a difference?’ I asked.

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