2015

OPEN AND READ

My body is not an apology. It’s not an excuse…nor a justification to put others at ease.

I can’t listen to this any longer she exclaims; can’t we just talk about something else?

Won’t pull it apart any longer, with details that receive a blank stare, rolled eyes or a dismissive grin.

Maybe I can refer you to psychology, the oncologist suggests.

I refrain from setting it aside, from pretending to disconnect long enough to carry on with life in some semblance of that which I once knew. It’s futile, anyway.

The prosthetic breasts weigh about five pounds each; for twelve hours a day they hug me until I can barely breathe. When I bend forward they escape out of place, rebellion sets out, it seems, to shame.

So it remains, what’s left accompanying me for all to see.

My body, you see, is a map.

An atlas of the places I’ve been, presenting jagged terrain of vestiges, imprinted ferocity of instruments/elements, and deep hollowed caverns where I often retreat. My body…a diagram of the peaks and plateaus upon which I’ve grappled and collapsed.

“Due to the vacuum, breast tissue is first drawn to a 19 mm length window present at the tip of the needle, cut by a high speed rotating blade and then dragged onto the drawing room placed at the proximal end of the handpiece needle-holder.” -- Excerpt from a stereotactic biopsy training manual.

Scars sit in the banks of rivers carved dry. Tumors…hills which spread so wide that there’s no going around. Instead, I must lay tracks, and like a locomotive tunnel through.

Patients having breast cancer surgery may be sent home from the hospital with one or more drains. This drain consists of a small plastic reservoir bulb connected to a flexible drainage tube. Its purpose is to remove fluid from the surgical wound through mild suction.

Hair formerly darkened chestnut, now the bark of birch. Memories…a willow once wept when strands, long playful strands my baby held in his tiny hands, detached and whirled away.

Alopecia, caused by chemotherapy, may occur throughout the body, including the head, eyelashes and brows, arms, legs, and pubic area. Hair falls out entirely; gradually at first, then in clumps.

A map of words can show what you missed when you chose to take an alternate route, shifting your eyes from my view, forgetting that my vision is quite clear. A destination I hadn’t chosen; yet, placed on a path and told I must run. Foolish enough to believe that disease had been left behind…only to find that another crept quietly back in such surprise.

March 2015 – Six nodules in both lobes of the thyroid and the connecting isthmus. Biopsy rules out that they are all benign. The patient is left to face cancer number two.

This time, to its horror, perhaps to yours, I’ve befriended the body, the killer within, the ghosts that linger. I’ve said, “Come, sit beside me; we’ll rest together before we begin.” I envision us, the tormentors of the cells, tissues of the wounds, the chemicals dancing within my brain and me…all of us…around a campfire on the open plain, listening to crickets and watching the flames. I won’t apologize for unannounced respite…for the necessary pauses that society hates me to take. It focuses on the future, but I take hold of the past. I study the bodies that trekked the winding roads before me. Sojourners on a common but separate path.

An estimated 169.3 million years of healthy lives were lost globally because of cancer in 2008 (the year I was first diagnosed). Worldwide, almost 32.5 million people -- diagnosed with cancer within the five years previously -- were alive at the end of 2012; I was one of them.

My body is a map. And in time, it, too, will change. It erodes with wind and the rain, with age and tears.

But it’s still here.

It’s not an apology, but a statement…a guidebook of gratitude.

Michelle Fimon – © 2015


Note: This was written as part of my disability writers' group, "Not Enough Spoons," facilitator Angie River https://nittygrittynakedness.wordpress.com/2014/09/11/canvas/
through the Transformative Language Arts Network. It was inspired from a piece by Andrea Gibson, entitled, "On Illness, Belief, and Saying Yes," which is found via the following link:

http://thebodyisnotanapology.com/magazine/on-illness-belief-and-saying-yes/