BEYOND WORDS – A Dialog of the Spirit

I’ve been visiting Harold (not the man's real name) as a hospice volunteer for three months now. His diagnosis is Alzheimer’s disease, and the reason he’s in hospice is that it’s quite advanced.

When I first met him, Harold could talk. That is, he had enough breath to make sounds, and he could move his lips. He’d even punctuate his comments with hand gestures and the occasional little chuckle. But very little of it came across clearly enough for me to understand.

As for my end of the conversation, I’d tell him what kind of a day it was outside, report on how the Minnesota Twins were doing, or maybe recount one of my experiences I thought might resonate with one of his. Occasionally, when he was tracking, he’d respond to something I said quite clearly, “Oh, is that right?” That was nice to hear.

I did my best. Most often that meant simply maintaining eye contact with him as
he spoke, trying to keep that faintly-received channel open. Since I didn’t want to pretend to understand when I didn’t, all I could do was nod so he’d know I was, if not understanding, at least hearing him.

Once in a while I’d make out a word or two. If I heard “brother,” I’d respond, “Oh, your brother. Uh-huh” or “I’ll bet you and your brother were quite a pair.” Anything to preserve a crack in that shell of isolation the poor man must inhabit.

      I remember vividly why I originally signed 
      up for hospice work...I knew it had little to 
      do with words.

A LOSS FOR WORDS
Harold still likes to talk, but now, at this week’s visit, he’s clearly faded…a lot. He’s gazing up at me with what appears to be the intent of speaking, but I have to look hard to detect the subtle movement of his lips. I hear wisps of air coming out of his mouth, but he can no longer make a sound.

I’m so sad for him; I know he’d once been a pretty gregarious fellow. He still had the will, but not the way. I also feel an arresting sense of gratitude. Yes, of course, simply for not being Harold, but also for the opportunity– the privilege—of being with this good man at such a vulnerable point in his life.


I’m a writer; my stock in trade is communicating with words. So this is unfamiliar territory for me. Yet I remember vividly why I originally signed up for hospice work. I felt I had something spiritual to offer. I wasn’t quite sure how to describe it, but I knew it had little to do with words.

HEARING SILENCE
So I’m sitting here at Harold’s bedside, and he’s just looking up into my eyes. It’s a little unnerving, but I feel something—I’ll call it energy for lack of a better word—flowing between us. It feels good, and I can only hope Harold feels it too.

I take his gnarly hand and hope I can convey some kind of understanding that way. I don’t know how much he can grasp, but I acknowledge how awful it must be to have thoughts ambushed like that before he can get them out. “It’s okay,” I reassure him. “I’m hearing you.”

Our hour together comes to an end. I take his hand again and ask if it’s okay for me to come back next week. He just looks at me. As I walk away, I recall the moment, just the week before, when, after I’d strained the whole time to understand a word here and there, he somehow managed to say, as plain as day, “Thank you for coming.”

Today, he says nothing. But his eyes follow me through the door.

MY BRAIN ON DRUGS – A Little Fun With "Pharmanyms"

In a previous life I was a copywriter, brand creator and sloganeer. So this post derives as much from that persona as from that of the wondering wanderer I’ve assumed the past few years.

THE CURE-ALL COME-ON
If you’re one of the few folks still watching original, seen-when-aired TV—as opposed to Tivoed programs or on-demand stuff where you can skip the ads—then you’ve seen these incessant commercials for drugs. You can’t watch for ten minutes without seeing one.

Advertisers of everything from hair growers to testosterone boosters to toenail fungus fighters try to convince you—despite the long, speed-read list of sometimes dire side effects—to demand their potion from your doctor. Hell, there are even drugs to improve the performance of the drugs they sold you before!

For starters, shouldn't the insidious tactic of getting you to ask for something your doc may not know much more about than what the culprits themselves have told him be illegal?

And, even if you’re not as cynical as I am, you’ve got to agree there’s something else that's just patently ludicrous about many of these ads: the names.

          I dare you to tell me which are real 
          brands and which are the impostors.

PHOTO: New York Zoological Society via Wikimedia Commons

THE CHIMP TEST
Does anyone else think, as I do, that you could sit a chimp down in front of a two- or three-column list of random syllables, train it to pick one from each column, and come up with a better name than Xeljanz*? C’mon!

Now, lest you think I’m just ranting—perhaps resentful that some branding pros out there are making a small fortune dreaming up these absurd monikers—here’s a little test. Below is a list of 20 drug brands. (I’ve left out ones so pervasive, like Cialis or Prednisone, that they’ve muscled their way into the vernacular.) I've also spared those which at least try to suggest what they do—like Flonase.

Ten of the names are real, the result, one would assume, of exhaustive research, brainstorming and focus group testing.

The other ten are pure gibberish; I created them in about five minutes using the chimp method—combining randomly-chosen syllables from two or three columns. I challenge you to tell me which are real brands and which are the impostors.

  1. Abradex
  2. Latuda
  3. Cynerol
  4. Osphena
  5. Curina
  6. Stekara
  7. Midaflex
  8. Myrbetriq
  9. Xufera
10. Treximet
11. Infuragel
12. Kaletra
13. Doloram
14. Ertaczo
15. Arterian
16. Fosrenol
17. Jyntala
18. Dacogen
19. Somniz
20. Xarelto

Absolutely insane, right? But then what would you expect from folks who think you’re dumb enough to want something called Revatio?** How about Dumrite? Ufelferit?

 * Xeljanz is a JAK inhibitor, claimed to disrupt the nerve pathways that lead to the inflammation associated with RA.
 ** Revatio, from Pfizer, is the same drug as Viagra, but marketed to treat hypertension (high blood pressure).

LANGUAGE QUIRKS – When a Few Words Are a Scream

For one who appreciates nuance, language is a storehouse of little quirks and wonders unto itself. Here are just a few that, since I first noticed them, have continued to fascinate—and occasionally irk—me.

Sometime in the last couple of decades—I'm not sure exactly when, but it seemed to have happened in a matter of just a year or two—the customary greeting one received from a counter person (at a bank or a fast food restaurant, for example) morphed from "Hi, may/can I help you?" or the somewhat more curt "Who's next?" to a lazy hybrid of the two: "Can I help who's next?"

It's not so much that the expression changed that fascinates me, but how it changed. Now I'm no etymologist, but I'm guessing it went viral within a few days of its use by a character on a sitcom. It caught on, and its curious appeal has continued to spread—even to people who should know better.

Here's another quirk that, once you first notice it, you'll seldom make it through a day without hearing. I suspect this one owes its existence to more than just the rapid spread of popular culture; it's just too subtle. It must be something about how our minds work. Consider these two sentences:

       "The problem is that she never got the information in the first place."

       "The problem is is that she never got the information in the first place."

What's the difference? You will almost never hear the first sentence. For some odd reason most people—and I mean almost everyone—will say "is" twice in any sentence of that construction. See if you can train your ear to catch it.

     "Everyone was grabbing for the 
       best deals. It was a real land mine!"

Then there are those hilarious, unintended manglings of common expressions. For years I've been fascinated with malapropisms, the inadvertent, usually humorous, substitution of words which sound like other words—like "He loves to dance the flamingo." (for flamenco).  I've taken a slightly different tack, fixating on how often speakers manage to blend two or more common descriptive phrases. I call them Mixed Monikers. Here are just a few of the many I've heard and jotted down over the years:

In trying to describe how little he trusted something one of his co-workers had said, I think this guy came up with an effective marriage of "flew in the face of reality" and "face the facts":

      "When I heard that, it just flew in the facts of what everyone else knows."

A radio talk show caller, trying to express the urgency of the need to pass a piece of legislation, unwittingly combined "like nobody's business" with "like there's no tomorrow" to produce:

      "They ought to be working like nobody's tomorrow!"

Supermodel and Bravo's Project Runway host, Heidi Klum, describing an occasion in which she was at a frantic loss for words, may have unwittingly merged "gasping for air" with "grasping at straws" when she said:

      "...I was gasping for the right word."

NPR reporter Jack Speer, in describing an especially critical ruling of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court (in the Delphi case), entertained me with this spontaneous intersection between "landmark" and "watershed":

      "It was a watermark decision."

And finally, one of my very favorites:

My mother-in-law, excited to tell us about the deals she'd found at one of those bargain basement sales in which shoppers push and shove their way to bins of discounted items, apparently grafted "Land Rush" to "Gold Mine":

      "Everyone was grabbing for the best deals. It was a real land mine!"