I’m sitting here feeling halfway comfortable after having taken my morning painkiller drug. As is typical of people in pain, I can’t think of much to talk about. I’m withdrawn. I just dug through two plastic boxes to find the knee brace I once used. My bad back is now affecting my knee, and I still have seven days until they knock me blissfully out and I wake up later, no time having passed but much having transpired.
People like to talk about their surgeries the same way the ancient mariner liked to talk about the albatross. It’s proof of the ordeal they’ve survived, proof of their bravery and the mystical nature of survival. It’s all mystery, all below consciousness.
When I was a child, I had sore throats, ear infections, stomach aches, and the usual childhood diseases. Of course I did. I was building up immunities. The cures were so feeble, comparatively. In the 40s (I was born in ’44) there were no antihistamines, so when the mucus got terribly bad, I’d be off to the doctor to lie down on the table and say “K,K,K,K,K,K,” while the doctor sucked mucus out of my sinuses with a large syringe. (Imagine the person who had to clean out the syringe later!). As for ear infections, which I had plenty of, and which were probably responsible for my bad ears today, the remedy was to puncture the eardrum to let the pressure out. I can still hear/feel the sound of the drum being punctured, a kind of hollow, watery thud.
You might say the doctor was the most prominent member of our family. My brain damaged brother had daily seizures and often hurt himself in the process. It was the infancy of therapeutic drugs, and there was always the search for a more effective one, or combination.
I am a walking, talking tribute to modern medicine. Cancer, twice. The first was stage 3. And here I am, still. Hernias, meniscus repair, retinal repair (twice), cataract surgery. I can mentally travel the length of my body stumbling over old surgeries as I go. My very first was to raise the totally flat arch of my right foot to stop the pain of bone hitting the pavement.
Then again, I’ve been a walker, a runner, a biker, a swimmer. I say “have been,” in the devout hope that I will be back to at least two of those activities by spring or summer. I feel like a strong, athletic person, even if the evidence at present belies that.
It seems incongruous that I’m a writer first of all. Give me a choice, maybe I’d go swimming instead of writing. At least sometimes. Here’s what I just thought of—you have to ride your bike along the road, take long walks, swim the distance, in order to see the squirming, wriggling details of living. To see the delicate way the birds at the feeder pick up one sunflower seed and take off with it.
poets in their bassinets
dream a splendid woman holding over their baby eyes
a globe, shining with
possibility. someone,
she smiles, has to see this
and report it, and they
in their innocence
believing that all will be
as beautiful as she is,
whimper use me, use me
and oh how terrifying
that she does.
—-Lucille Clifton
Immerse, that is. You have to immerse, or be immersed, don’t you? You have to drown in your own life, feel its relentlessness, including its pain. The church I grew up in baptized by immersion. You couldn’t just be sprinkled; It had to be all the way under. There have been times I felt so far under I thought I was drowning.
Here is one kind of immersion: a small child riding her tricycle down the hill, picking her way around the cracks in the sidewalk. Totally focused. The other kind—that of the watcher, the writer, who sees the child and records. Who ruminates, considers, evaluates. It’s a double layer, neither precluding the other.
I wonder if they’ll use the Da Vinci machine for my surgery. They used it for my cancer surgery. It’s a remarkable remove from the actual hands-on. The surgeon sits at a desk alongside, looking into the screen where the patient’s insides are magnified. The arms of the machine are directed to do the cutting, moving of organs, stitching. You could say it’s like the surgeon is writing a book.
P.S. I’ve decided to post my interviews with homeless people exclusively on Substack, so as not to confuse the two. I hope you’ll go to fledabrown.substack.com to read the next installment. It’s free unless you decide to pay.