Eisman Books

Works by Eugene Eisman and Diane Batshaw Eisman

  • Home
  • About Us
    • About Diane
    • About Eugene
  • Our Books
    • Bitter Medicine
    • No Such Agency
  • Doctor Cranky
  • Doctor Curmudgeon
  • Contact
You are here: Home / Doctor Curmudgeon / How I Found Out about My Grandparents and Sherlock Holmes

How I Found Out about My Grandparents and Sherlock Holmes

July 25, 2014 By Admin Leave a Comment

Today I am more than disheartened.

I am exceptionally grumpy.

The day has ended for my staff.

Having already spent much agonizing time on the phone jousting with insurance companies, returning phone calls, reviewing charts, I have now journeyed beyond irritable.

Finally —

The last EMR entry is complete.

The last prescription written.

If I can remember the alarm code, find my car in the lot and wend my way through side streets, avoiding the heaviest traffic, I should soon be within growling distance of my home.

At last, I find my house. It is still there.

Entering through the kitchen door, my mood darkens further as I survey the disorganization around me

The time has come.

The time to do something.

The time to create order from this chaos.

I muse. If I just spend ten minutes each day, throwing things out . . . only 17 years . . . and I will reside not in a state of entropy, but one of clarity and order.

As if examining a patient, I will begin from the top down. Head to feet. Attic to basement.

Cautiously, I climb the stairway to the attic. Thinking of my new vow, I will only spend ten minutes, no more, no less.

As I grope for the wall switch, I stumble over an old chest.

My normal state of crabbiness returns as I realize that I have probably fractured the first toe of my right foot.

But wait! There is a bright light in this situation!

How can I possibly continue to organize and clean with a fractured toe? I would kiss that toe if I could bend and it didn’t hurt so much.

Time to go downstairs, tape the darn thing, put up my feet, grab some chocolate and glower.

However before I had a chance to glower, I found that the old chest had flipped over and the top had sprung open.

Finding a musty, tattered quilt nearby, I brushed away mold, disgusting critters and centuries of dust.

And there they were: Great-Grandmother Cranky’s diaries!

My glower had not yet settled in place, but my toe had begun to throb, I grabbed volume one, closed the trunk lid and cautiously took my agonizing way downstairs.

After my toe had been iced and buddy-taped to its mates, I settled into my husband’s favorite recliner.

When I was a child, my bedtime stories were not from children’s books, but were stories about the life of my great-grandmother, Dr. Cranky.

I had been told that she was a half-sister to a Dr. Watson, and her favorite patient was a Sherlock Holmes.

Not being a gullible child, I considered these stories to be family myths.

My great-grandmother, Dr. Cranky Wangshaw, was one of the few women physicians in London. She was in practice with her husband, the famous Dr. Yevgeny Vesalius-Steinberger.

I opened the diary and, carefully handling the yellowed paper, I saw in her beautiful handwriting:

Introducing Dr. Cranky

Filed Under: Doctor Curmudgeon

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Our Books

No Such Agency
Bitter Medicine

Introducing Doctor Curmudgeon®

Doctor Curmudgeon Doctor Curmudgeon® is a family physician, medical educator and voiceover artist. Back in the Neolithic ERA, the good doctor gained renown for her expertise in trephination. Now, after many centuries in practice, Doctor Curmudgeon is cranky and has rightfully earned the honorific of “Curmudgeon.” Read more from Doctor Curmudgeon or see the Doctor Curmudgeon columns on the Sermo.com blog.

© 2014-2015 Eugene Eisman and Diane Batshaw Eisman • Dr. Curmudgeon (Registered, US Patent & Trademark Office) • Site by Jan Bear, Professional Web Strategies