The girl with the dromedary gait

Abstract

You haven't seen her in a long while now, but you'd still recognize her, the girl with the dromedary gait. A girl who was, how did you put it, “a most magnificent dystonic.” Knock-kneed, crooked of spine, bent at the waist, hips rotated sideways, pivoting, her head held up like a marionette with just a cranial string. Remember her mane of blond hair, curled in helices and tangles, tamed with a ribbon? She was beautiful. Clear skin, high cheekbones, lips full and firm, perfect teeth, her forehead, just shy of hydrocephalic, and almond eyes under delicately arched brows. Remember that beautiful smile? Still no recollection, Herr Professor? You called her smile a rictal grimace. We disagreed; I thought it was personal, directed toward me. You recalled how you loved a Wilsonian girl once. Her beguiling risor sardonicus captivated you. Denny-Brown's British anti-lewisite chelated her dreadful gait and curious smile away. You set her free, neurologically speaking, and she never returned to you. You told me, on the strengths of your vast experience and judgment regarding women and neurologic gaits, Herr Professor, “Don't fall in love with Wilsonian s , girls with tabes or the dromedary girl.” How unkind your warning, how wrong you were! Remember her approach? A clomp and shuffle, the squeak of braces in custom shoes, the bellows-wheeze of abdominal inspirations. Her breasts, lopsided, rose and fell asynchronously with the pendular motions of her bat-stiff arm. Or did her breathing drive that swing? Remember that conversation? I said it was the arm. You countered that her costals, and part of her diaphragm, stunned by a dystonia so severe, led to a two-stroke abdominal/thoracic cycle the sum of which was a torque, mainly along the spine's axis. Secondary effects included the swing of her chest and the mild wobble …