UnderWoman was overjoyed at the Society For Neuroscience Conference, where she delighted in Elsevier’s Brain Navigator, which enabled attendees to make their own Thinking Caps. As much as her cape had ever identified her as a SuperHero, her eye patch as having Myasthenia Gravis and her Medical Alert Card as a wildcard, the Thinking Cap announced her neuroscientific superpowers — the ability to know where and when in her own brain she was thinking and feeling what…and to similarly help others to know their own minds.

A “EUREKA!” thought begins forming in her Frontal Lobe:

March 12 – 18 Brain Awareness Week is still a few days away, and so much EDUCATION and CELEBRATION can be brought together for the occasion.

And so, UnderWoman preps Trephinations, her blog for fellow medical adventurers, for the flurry of activity that is to follow.

She mines NERVE — SFN’s Neuroscience Education Resource Virtual Encycloportal.

She steeps herself in Neuroscience Core Concepts; congratulates the winners of the National Brain Bee; and incites the residents of Seizure World (her new Maryland home) and the movers and shakers of TNYECONS — The New York EpiCenter of NeuroScience, of which she is a co-founder:

Put your Thinking Caps on! Discover what Brain Awareness Week is all about! Download and digest SFN’s Brain Facts: A Primer on the Brain and Nervous System and the International Brain Research Organization’s Neuroscience of The Brain.

And get set to know neuroscience, brains, behavior and your own minds like never before!

Then UnderWoman opens a window!

Inquiring minds want to know: What will you do with your new-found knowledge? How creatively and innovatively can you put into practice? And what wonderful benefits can you derive from so doing?

UnderWoman is busy building out a showcase for YOU…and will be back SOON!

This “In the aftermath of the first snow” and !! MEDICAL ALERT !! stuff was all well and good.

But in January 2010, UnderWoman’s myasthenia gravis took a turn for the life threatening, and our hero very nearly died….

After a prolonged flare that could not be brought under control despite all the strong medicines and rigorous treatments tried, UnderWoman wound up intubated in the St. Cukes NICU, where they very nearly killed her before transferring her to her own TNYECONS (The New York EpiCenter of NeuroScience) and the very capable (but trembling) hands of the soon-to-retire Rich Granfeld and his caring, talented team.

As but one of the results of being ventilated (and literally unable to speak) for a week, UnderWoman’s Mom, Merrie Do-It, with the help of a concerted team of family and staff (and one disgruntled UnderWoman detractor), conspired that UnderWoman should move from Manhattan, her soul city of 26 years, to her home state of Maryland BEFORE UnderWoman could regain enough physical, emotional or financial strength to even think about it…much less protest.

In Maryland, Merrie Do-It could serve as UnderWoman’s chef, chauffeur, patron saint and pain in the a**.

So here UnderWoman is, at long last, back in the very land of encroaching suburbs and endless strip malls that she had worked so hard to escape so many years ago…and LOVING IT!!

Well, actually, it was a strange and winding road from her last backwards glances at Brian Liebman to “LOVING IT” on her own.

So more about that….

In Maryland, UnderWoman has time to concentrate on herself.

What else is there to do, since she neglected to have kids and buy a house here so many years ago?

As soon as she has regained adequate physical and emotional strength, she calls the marketing department of Under Armour, also based in Maryland, in hopes of procuring potential sponsorship and cross-promotion opportunities.

Her tides must be turning, because UnderWoman almost immediately receives a call back from an Under Armour’s talent agent, who accuses UnderWoman of…having skinny arms!

What does he expect?  UnderWoman’s logo — unlike the expensive ones that her person, brand builder Wendy Do-It, has helped spearhead for major companies, projects and products — cost $0, and is in fact cut out from her Sweet Sixteen caricature, when UW was even more energetic than she is now…and very nearly anorexic.

The agency is not the first to proclaim that UW’s big eyes and thin thighs might send the wrong message to a world already plagued with eating disorders and misplaced aspirations towards them.

More importantly, UnderWoman asks, what does Under Armour PROPOSE?

Despite her disabilities, Under Armour proposes that UnderWoman take up weight training and at least one sport.

Well!  Intel had wanted Wendy Do-It to get good at golf shortly before her myasthenia gravis diagnosis.  Back then, Intel was launching the Tiger Woods Learning Centers, and thought that some some “course time” could extend Wendy’s schmoozing repertoire from after-hours drinking with clients (at which she excelled) into the daylight hours.

Simultaneously, Wendy had tried taking up tennis again.  But alas, the signs she posted in Central Park didn’t attract quite the attention she’d wanted:

“Middle-aged girl, with small head (racquets had enlarged since her last foray into the field) and no balls (why invest in balls until one needed balls…) seeks patient partner to take to the courts.”

Then, too, her AOL boss had been so big into basketball that he ultimately ended up owning the team!  Hopefully they would take in some home games together soon.

But first things first:

UnderWoman seeks an illustrator with bold Sharpie to bulk her up — ideally also replacing the heart from her Sweet Sixteen caricature with golf club, tennis racquet, basketball.

UnderWoman seeks a personal trainer.

And she seeks a few good sponsors….

For the patience and funds of Merrie Do-It are running short.  And UnderWoman longs to stand on her own two feet again….But this time, on stronger legs!

UnderWoman likes her first logo!

Unlike days of brand building for Fortune 500s — with rich budgets and art departments around the world — UnderWoman Take One has cost nothing.

She is proud to have done something semi-artistic on her own:

She has, without serious injury, used an X-Acto knife to cut an image from a photo of a caricature of herself at sixteen. This image leaps out from an egg cracking open, made by using a Sharpie to nestle a W into the U. She loves the tag lines that this logo might lead to — UnderWoman Hatches a Plan, UnderWoman Thinks Outside the Egg, UnderWoman Acts Over her Egg, and more.

She is confident that X-Acto and Sharpie will sign on as sponsors soon.

Still, the feedback on the original UW logo does not come back unanimous:

Some say UnderWoman’s big eyes and thin thighs do no service to humanity.

Others are upset that she is missing a left hand. (It formerly held a “Sweet Sixteen” heart that Wendy found sappy and removed with a quick slip of the wrist….)

Taking all this feedback in stride, and now embracing her life in Maryland enough to safely return to New York without posing a flight risk, UnderWoman and entourage hop a bus to Manhattan and set off in search:

At the Central Park Zoo, UnderWoman susses out the caricaturists — judging them on a weighted average of talent, paper stock, pricing, boldness, accuracy, speed.

When she has found THE ONE, she presents him with her hope — holding forth the cut-out figure, presenting her preferred Pantone Matching System color palette, pointing to potential type faces, pontificating about the “happy medium” look that will “split the difference” between her younger self and her older self.

“Wait,” the Caricature King cuts her short: “You are looking for a LOGO, not a caricature!”

“Well, really more like a brand than a logo,” says UnderWoman, quite pleased.

“I can’t just do that for you, here, in public, in the park,” he hisses, “lest everyone in the line behind you also seeks to be a brand.”

“And the problem with that would be?” asks UnderWoman.

He hands her a card, and says, in loud whisper: “I mean, I would have to do this in private, at night, for more pay.”

UnderWoman considers the possibilities, begins to bargain: “Night would be WONDERFUL,” she purrs.  “Would you be willing to throw in some stocks of Obama, Oprah, Martha, Madoff?  UnderWoman would like to talk with them. UnderWoman also seeks thematic and seasonal backdrops as part of the packege. See! The cracking egg also resembles a tulip, which is especially heartening in the Spring. I’m thinking Colorforms, paper dolls. And….”

“Please stop now,” he says. “Google me. E-mail me. Call me. But don’t give people ideas….”

“Dessine-moi un mouton,” she says, pouting, strutting, as parting words.

He laughs…knows just what she means!

But it will be months before they pursue this path again.

For now, other things take precedence….

UnderWoman decides that it’s best to proceed along the lines of Saint-Exupery’s Le Petit Prince, who truculently demands, dessine-moi un mouton….”

In Central Park, just north of Caricature King, armed with all the tools of her trade and a few work-for-hire forms, she will beseech strangers to draw their versions of she and her entourage.

Things do not exactly go as planned:

Brisk-It, her Attention Deficit Disorder Dog, runs off in all directions. Pig-It, the three-legged one, hops and limps along in sporadic bursts.  And Risk-It, the myotonic goat, faints whenever excited or scared…which is always.  The progress is slow. No people have been approached. No portraits have been drawn.

Risk-It faints yet again in the enthusiasm of entering Sheep’s Meadow…when Brian Liebman, the amnesic neuro-anatomist, UnderWoman’s co-star from myasthenia gravis night out…and so much more…comes running over.

As usual, he is brilliant, enthusiastic, and a little “off.”

It is as if they have not missed a beat…as if it has not been months since UnderWoman’s sudden disappearance from their intense but brief scene, narrated through the senses, with Central Park as sundial, meeting each other at every gate they could name…and at some that had not yet been named.

“Those are a lot of pencils in your pocket,” he says.  “You weren’t going to write me off, were you?”

She laughs.

“I would have called if you’d had a phone number or a phone, a name you could remember or one I could pronounce.”

She hands him a doctor’s note — a drastically shrunk-down top-line summary of her precipitous flare’s progression — from ocular symptoms that made it hard to see to bulbar ones that made it hard to speak, and then to swallow, and then to breathe, and that ultimately led to UnderWoman’s intubation / ventilation and her Maryland “vacation.”

“I asked after you as soon as I could talk again,” UnderWoman assures.  “But nobody knew:  Where where you?”

“Missing,” he says mournfully, shrugging his shoulders.

Brian hands her his notebook.

It brims with pieces of poem, snippets of songs, favorite math equations, and drawings that take her breath away.

Brian and UnderWoman incline their heads towards each other.  Both cry….

And then, Brisk-It pees on Brian’s pants leg again.

And the animals of Delacorte Music Clock strike up their march.

There will be time!  There will be time….

In the aftermath of the season’s first snow, Central Park glows.

It had been a glorious day – from dogs running free in the deep powder of the Great Lawn at sunrise and hundreds of families sledding on the slopes of Cedar Hill all afternoon to the view of dozens of snow men, women and sculptures catching the evening sun.

Now, night is falling, and the crowds have cleared.

What remains is mostly broken sleds, empty pizza boxes and water bottles, maintenance and security crews.

And, beneath a grove of pines, seemingly besotted and without bearings, unable to see or speak clearly, stumbling when she tries to stand…one woman.

And, making his way towards her, weighed down with scavenged bits of food, fabrics and discarded sections of the Sunday Times, one seemingly homeless man….

She tries to say something to him…either with a severe speech impediment or in a language he can’t understand.

With questionable motive, he picks up her purse from the picnic table and begins rifling through it — camera, calendar, cell phone, cash, credit cards….

She musters enough strength to elbow him in the chest, grab her wallet back and flash her !MEDICAL ALERT CARD! like it was some badge of courage.

“I have myasthenia gravis,” it says in bold letters, red and black, ”a disease that can make me so weak that I may have difficulty standing or speaking….Sometimes these symptoms are mistaken for intoxication.  If I appear to need help, please contact my physician or hospital immediately.”

Now the man is conflicted.  He seems to be in utter shock, to hover somewhere between criminal intent and genuine caring.

He pauses, picks up an abandoned blanket, puts it around her shoulders, offers food and drink, thinks for a minute, seems confused about the calling the contacts on her card, sits at the picnic table and begins to cry.

She sits next to him and cries also.

Some time goes by.

Then, the man seems to take heart, has hatched a plan:

“How many fingers am I holding up?” he asks, making the sign that doubles for “peace” and “victory.”

She also holds up two, and he seems pleased.

He touches his index finger to his nose.

She does the same.

Next, he begins reciting poetry:

“Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a….”

She fills in the next word, barely audible, “patient…”

He continues:

“Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats….”

Then, he spies a police officer out of the corner of his eye and flags him down.

The NYPD officer in his Interceptor is immediately on the scene…was, in fact, already on his way there…..

“What have we here?” he asks.  “A drunk and a derelict?  Or is there another way you want to explain it?”

The woman gestures to herself — “Endy Ubit” — hands the police officer her medical card, points to somewhere just beyond the perimeter of park, and says, incoherently, emphatically, drooling slightly,  “Om.”

The officer looks perplexed, and motions to the man:  “And you, Tarzan…under arrest?”

Endy shakes her head “No. Ero!”

“Zero?”  The officer is trying hard to understand.  Endy fishes in her purse for pen and paper, and holds up this sign:  “Hero.”

The man formerly suspected of stealing her purse seems surprised, but tries the word on for size:  “Hero…  Yes, I suppose so!”

“And that makes me…..?” asks the officer.

She holds up the sign again:

“Hero.”

They fall silent, stand in a circle.

Blare and flash of sirens approach.

“An ambulance?” asks the man.

“And a squad car,” says the officer.

“Om only?!” pleads Endy, who both men are almost starting to understand.

Medics assess Endy’s condition while the man undergoes a background check.

After some gallows humor and a little laughter, the cars leave, sirens off.

“Om only,” says the officer.

With Endy propped up in the middle, both men see her safely home.

At the doorstep:

“Om now,” offers Endy.

“You saw the “ero” in us,” says the gentleman.

“There’s got to be a name for that,” says the officer.

In fact, there is!

“UnderWoman,” says Endy, bowing her head respectfully, ducking inside.

It is a name she had bestowed upon herself only recently — in tribute to her relatively new “disability;” in honor of her lifelong ability to see and bring out the best in self and others; and in celebration of her talent for making fun, even if only of herself, in the face of it all….

It is the first time she has uttered the name aloud.

Myasthenia gravis aside, mispronouncing her own name is nothing new to UnderWoman.

The first words she can remember saying were “Wendy Do-It!”

And it stuck!

It stuck for her parents, Archer and Merrie.  For her brothers, Scoot and Grog.

Even the Do-It Family animals — Risk-It, the myotonic goat; Pig-It, the three-legged one;  Brisk-It, the attention deficit disorder dog — benefitted from a kind of exuberant individualism that belied what others on the block (the DuMores and BoyCotts, for example…) would see as obstacles.

So it goes for brand builder Wendy Dubit in the aftermath of a sudden myasthenia flare….

After recounting the adventures of the night before, in consult with her doctors, while undergoing a round of in-home intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG), she spends a few days under covers…and finds the time, the place, the climate delicious.

Into her boat-like bed she brings all-time favorite books and poems – St. Exupery’s “Little Prince,” all things Seuss, T.S. Eliot, Hafiz and more.  She brings pens and pencils of every color, sketch pads, writing pads.

She plays music, which has become the best medicine.  She occasionally atomizes the room with fragrances of lilac, linden, orange blossom, night-blooming jasmine.  She eats carrot-ginger soup with hearty bread, sips orange juice and seltzer zested with lemon, lime, kumquat and elixirs of elderflower and gentian.

She is refreshing her memory, enjoying the present, envisioning the future.

Her moss-green satin comforter would make a great cape….

UnderWoman, a.k.a. Wendy Do-It, is underway!

UnderWoman regains her strength relatively quickly, and is EXCITED to show her entourage the Snow People of Central Park.

They will retrace her steps from the day before yesterday — back through the Arthur Ross Pinetum (where so much had taken place), to and through the Great Lawn, by the Delacorte Theater, past the Swedish Cottage, up into Shakespeare Garden.

En route, she will refresh her memory about how two strangers (one stranger than the other), had come to her aid.  And she will share with Risk-It, Brisk-It and Pig-It all the joys of NYC in Winter – all that can be observed, created and learned from SNOW.

Of course, the going is slow.

Brisk-It, her Attention Deficit Disorder Dog, runs off in all directions.

Pig-It, who has three legs, hops and limps along through pure powder in sporadic bursts.

And Risk-It faints whenever excited or scared…which is almost always.

She faints yet again upon seeing a circle of Snow People at the outskirts of the Pinetum.

Just then, the gentleman from “mysasthenia gravis night out” comes running over — enthusiastic, but a little bit “off.”

“UnderWoman,” he exclaims, “You didn’t tell me you had a myotonic goat!”

“And you, Good Sir, didn’t even tell me your name.  But I was hoping we would meet again….”

And then, as she leans in towards the fainting goat and the odd man, she smells something strange…..

As she always does upon encountering a new smell — be it good, bad, or as-yet undetermined — UnderWoman files it away in the vast stores of her memory; compares and contrasts it to all that is catalogued there.

If she must, she will wait until she has the words to express what it is.

Meantime, the strange man is not even giving her his name.

Is that he can’t?  Or that he won’t?

The smell emanating from him is vaguely urinous — further reinforcing her impressions that he could be homeless.  But he also has a regal, intelligent, mysterious air that leads UnderWoman to believe that he might also be famous and/or infamous.

He uses a line that has worked on her before:

“Let us go then, you and I….”

It’s a wonderful day.  And UnderWoman has very little to lose.

So she and entourage and odd fellow journey, slowly, south together.

They enter Central Park Zoo at 1 p.m., just as monkeys ring the brass bell of the Delacorte Clock and the festive dance of elephants, hippos and goats begins.

As they proceed through the zoo, there is something about the entourage that is causing not only people…but also animals…to turn their heads.

Risk-It faints.  Brisk-It pees on UnderWoman’s pants leg.  Pig-It is trying hard to telegraph something.

UnderWoman sees, and is mesmerized:  The man whose name we do not yet know is in an intense eye-lock with a whitetail deer buck on the other side of the glass.  The buck is going CRAZY. He is rearing up, pawing the sky, rubbing and banging his head against the wall.

For all intents and purposes, he appears to be in rut.

At first, the nameless, urinous man seems to be vamping for the buck in rut – swishing his hips, running his hands through his longish hair.

It seems to be an instinct-driven and intense mating dance.

Our stranger is at turns coy and beckoning.  The buck is….

The buck is….

The buck is about to break through the glass!  Or so it seems to a growing throng of bystanders and to appear from stress fractures that are rippling out in concentric circles.

The man faints straightaway.  The wall holds.

A park police officer in her Interceptor III is on the scene immediately:

“Ma’am, do you know this man?” she asks.

“He seems to be coming ‘round here a lot, and roiling up our animals when he does.”

“I think we should call 911,” says UnderWoman.

Just then, the man comes to.

He is on his knees, pleading:  “Please, please, UnderWoman.  Take me to…..

“TNYECONS, TNYECONS….”

Now it sounds like Brian is choking on Dutch verb conjugations, stuck on a stutter…or potentially suffering  a stroke.  Passersby might think he was trying to flirt with UnderWoman’s goat, or had a  chicken bone in his throat.

But UnderWoman knows just what he means!

Not only is she familiar with the The New York EpiCenter of NeuroScience…as a patient of the renowned neurologist Rich Granfeld…but she is also the founder and director of  The Senses Bureau (TSB), The Center for Applied Synesthesia (TCFAS) and The Rod and Cone Club (TRACC) — all housed at and partially funded by TNYECONS.

Perhaps because the proper pronunciation of its acronym causes one to sound like an injured animal and produce a certain spittle on the lips, TNYECONS is often simply referred to as “Epi.”

Likewise, TCFAS (pronounced Sephardic style) has a signature “ring” that causes peoples’ eyes to roll upper left and that deters most of them from saying the acronym aloud while eating.

UnderWoman is a strong proponent of “not chewing with your mouth open” and “not talking with your mouth full.”

Well, not really….

In fact, UnderWoman was an early and enthusiastic practioner of both.  But when her newly diagnosed myasthenia flares, UnderWoman’s mouth may become so weak that she cannot and eat and speak at the same time and may mispronounce her own name.

As her ! MEDICAL ALERT CARD ! so proudly proclaims, sometimes these symptoms are mistaken for intoxication.  Still, she is committed to living LIFE.  Her condition bears her no shame!

But back to TNYECONS!

It is THE place for all the “movers and shakers” in neuroscience.  Whether you are studying Parkinson’s, ALS and the like, or just have it; whether you are conducting primary research on neuroplasticity, or just want to attend a lecture by someone who is, TNYECONS is the place for you!

UnderWoman is riffing on all these awesome aspects of her life…and on the ground-breaking programs that affect so many people’s lives…when Brian’s incessant honking — remarkably like the calls  of wild geese — bring her back to the present.

“TNYECONS, TNYECONS, TNYECONS” he cries.

“”Please take me to TNYECONS, UnderWoman!   My memory is  coming back. And I need…I need a safe place to crash.”

A lightbulb goes off in UnderWoman’s upper left front orbital.

Aha, she thinks:  He  IS an amnesic neurologist after all — something she had suspected the first time they met.

“Okay, I’ll call an ambulance.  I just wonder what we’ll do with….”

He glances at the animals, takes her hand:  “Let us go on foot, with entourage.  It will give us time to regroup, to recount.”

UnderWoman thinks to call 911 anyway, just to cover all the bases.  But instead , she calls her neurologist, the esteemed Dr. Rich Granfeld.

As always, he will be there, will know what to do.

“Ms. Do-It,” (he addresses her formally),  “It occurred to me when last we spoke.  But now I’m fairly certain:  Ms. Do-It, I believe you have found Dr. Brian Liebman.  Can you bring him here?”

“We are on our way,” says UnderWoman, then hesitates:  “But it could take time, as we are on foot and with entourage.  Dr. Granfeld, do you allow pigs in your office?”

“It is our preference and intent not to do so, Ms. Do-It.  But that has never stopped them before….”