Tag: writing

PAYBACK AIR FORCE STYLE – PART 2, Major Art Smukler, author & psychiatrist

by artsmuklermd, posted in Writing

Part 1 was published yesterday, 12/28/23

Since Forbes was a relatively small base, there were only ten physicians assigned to care for all the personnel – soldiers, wives, and kids. Every tenth night it was my turn to work in the ER.

One evening, a few months after my experience with Capt. Daniels, I was treating a ten-year-old boy for a sore throat, when Corporal Lewis, my medical corpsman, came into the treatment room with a confused look on his face.

“What’s going on, Corporal?”

“There’s a Capt. Daniels in the waiting room. When he came in, he saw your name on the board, and said, “What the fuck! Is there another doctor on call?”

“You can come back tomorrow, I said. He showed me his hand. He has a six-inch laceration that can’t wait. Definitely needs suturing.”

I smiled.

“What?”

“Tell you later. Please put him in the other treatment room and prep him.”

Five minutes later I entered the treatment room, and Daniels could hardly look at me. “Hi, Capt. Daniels,” I said, with a smile. “What happened?”

“I was doing some woodworking at home. Cut myself.”

I looked at the cut and nodded. “Okay. I’ll take care of it.”

I whispered to Corporal Lewis to get me a few things. He came back in the room with an eight-inch suturing needle, big enough to sew up an elephant, and a saw used to perform amputations.

He placed them on the table next to Daniels, stifled a grin and faced away.

“What the fuck! What’s that shit for? Doc! What are you doing?”

“It won’t hurt. It’s best that I do this without anesthesia. It’ll heal better.”

“You’re out of your fucking mind. Doc, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done what I did. Please. This isn’t right!”

For twenty seconds I kept a straight face and then burst out laughing.

Daniels stared at me, trying to fathom what this was all about.

I walked over, patted him on the back, and told him to relax. I took a tiny suture needle out of the drawer, drew up some lidocaine, numbed the area, and carefully sutured his laceration.

When I was done, he gave me a hug. “We good now, doc?”

I smiled. “We’re good, captain.”

Have a wonderful holiday! Enjoy a good read.

#Airforce, #Vietnamwar, #humor, #airforcepsychiatrist, #mysterynovels

HOW TO ENTER YOUR WRITER’S SOUL, by Art Smukler, author & psychiatrist

by artsmuklermd, posted in Psychiatry, Self Examination, Writing

What the heck is a writer’s soul?

Just my way of trying to describe the creative place where ideas and passion are first conceived.

Lately, I’ve been hooked on country music, the kind of stuff where lost love and dreams of the past, tear away at the walls that keep the forgotten 16-year-old locked away from our conscious minds. Remember your 1st love? Your 1st fight? Your 1st best friend? The troubled, idealistic Holden Caulfield trying to make the world a more honest place?

Back then we didn’t know or care about Republicans and Democrats, gun control or Gay Rights. We cared about love, friendship, and finding a way to make sense out of this huge, crazy world. We dreamed of a vague future, of glory on the ball field, of getting Betty or Robert to notice us and to reciprocate our love.

The pathway into the past, hidden by the layers of logic that come with adulthood, can be breached by just letting our mind wander to wherever it wants to go. That’s not so easy when the realities of making ends meet, raising kids, a job and working out marital issues are so right in our faces.

One way to start the journey inward is to really listen to music — country, jazz, oldies, classical, whatever — to allow it to carry you into the past or present or future — the same way just a tiny glance from the girl of your dreams would send you spinning for days at a time.

Another access to the past is through the sense of smell, the most primitive part of our brain. The scents of Thanksgiving with grandma, baking chocolate brownies with mom, even an odor that makes you cringe with disgust can send you spinning to a long forgotten place.

All our senses — sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste can do it. Leave the world of paying bills and fighting traffic and take a trip back to your past. That’s where the writer’s soul exists.

Don’t forget to follow Inside the Mind of a Psychiatrist.