Head Case Read Free

very close to me, taps on each of my arms, and asks me to tell him which arm he is tapping on. Then he does the same with each of my fingers on each hand. There is more neurological terminology chatter between them. I am starting to get annoyed. I look Dr. Volt straight in the eye and say, “You’re going to explain all of this to me later, right?” He looks at me as if I’ve spoken out of turn. “We’ll talk about this at the end of the exam.”
    He asks me to place my palm out flat, tells me that he will draw numbers on my palm with his finger.
    â€œWhat number is this?” he asks.
    â€œEight.”
    â€œAnd this?”
    â€œOne.”
    â€œAnd this?”
    â€œZero. Zero. And I think that one’s zero too.”
    They start to get excited. The three of us walk to the hallway outside, where Dr. Volt tells me to walk away from them, then toward them. Then on my heels, on my toes. I overhear Dr. Volt say to the resident “see the duck walk, the stiffening of the gait…” I become self-conscious and loosen up at the knees. “There, now it’s gone.”
    Though they’re trying to hide it from me, I can tell they’re really getting worked up, and I’m getting excited too, though I don’t know why we’re all so excited. The tension mounts with each test; I feel like the quarterback on our little winning football team about to make the winning neurological touchdown; after I walk up and down the hall again we’ll all high-five and throw the contents of the waiting-room water cooler over our heads. Instead, the end of the exam catches me by surprise. The resident leaves, and Dr. Volt takes me back to the room and tells me to talk to the receptionist about when to schedule my neuropsychological testing. I feel a bit let down, even a little used. I want to say, “Guys? Wait? Hey, guys? Do you want to, like, get coffee? Oh right, you already have coffee. I see.”
    I try to stall Dr. Volt as he jots some final notes on my chart. “I’m used to leaving a doctor’s office with … something. A diagnosis. Could you at least tell me what you saw? Did you … gather any important information?” He looks up from his notes and laughs. “Well, we won’t really know anything until we get back your MRI and neuropsych testing. And maybe a PET scan … Then we’ll all meet to discuss the results.” I stare at him blankly. “Here, go home and Google this.” He writes something on his prescription pad, tears off the page, and hands it to me.
    â€œBut I am often wrong,” he adds. “Don’t hold me to it.”
    On the slip of paper he’s written “Gerstmann’s Syndrome.” I think, Oh good, I have a syndrome . A syndrome feels as if it grants me more purchase than a learning disability, although really it’s just a new name for the same set of symptoms.
    *   *   *
    I may have a rare neurological disorder, a mysterious condition, the main signifier of which is the inability to tell my pointer from my pinky.

    What Is Gerstmann’s Syndrome?
    Gerstmann’s syndrome is a neurological disorder … characterized by four primary symptoms: a writing disability (agraphia or dysgraphia), a lack of understanding of the rules for calculation or arithmetic (acalculia or dyscalculia), an inability to distinguish right from left, and an inability to identify fingers (finger agnosia).
    This is the first description that I find when I punch “Developmental Gerstmann’s Syndrome” into Google’s search field, translated from Dr. Volt’s scrawl. The definition is from the Web site for the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
    Gerstmann’s has the feel of a hot-dog diagnosis, stitched from a pile of leftovers. Take a tube filled with bovine guts; where some see a hot dog, others see a cow. Both would be right.