November 11, Pictures old and new

Maria, Ioan and Elena, circa 1935

The last CT scan seemed to proceed with more ease than usual. In spite of the fact that I was late. I had mentally prepared to spend the whole day around this test. And yet, when the time came to leave the house, I could not find my keys. I went into a panic attack unwarranted by the circumstances. I felt like tearing my clothes off, and throwing myself on the floor with desperation. Forget that the hospital is just ten minutes away from the house in the city. It was raining. Forget that I could have called one of the smelly city cabs operated by disheveled men in pajamas. Who can act reasonably in those moments of panic?

If you take the time to look at it, now that's all in the past again, you will observe something meaningful contained in those apparently mad throws. Ripping your clothes off is of course not how you prepare for the test; nevertheless, having to take them off, that is, principally, your skin, technically and symbolically, is troubling beyond words. Because the machine, of course, does not care whether you are clothed or naked. Between telling you to breathe Now! and Stop! breathing, the feminine voice of this dominatrix sends transversal neon-blue photo-blades across your body, at those places of interest to your interested physician. For the lung specialist it goes to the lung, for the radiation oncologist it goes at the base of the neck, there where the tumor used to eat at the bone. There where a sizeable, sort of memorial hump, now marks the place of this self-digestion.  After which photo-shots, it puts the slides together in the shape of a body. Like a loaf of bread which has been sliced by that toothy guillotine for the convenience of the consumer, the evening before its expiry date, and is sold under its deceitful loafy form thanks to a sweaty plastic bag.

The nurse setting the IV for the contrast die had had her hair bleached. I complimented her, it suited her better than the shade she had put on before. She acknowledged, but maybe because she could not recall anything about me, she did not reciprocate.

The room was cool and I was wearing a scarf when I came in, a pretty one so the scanning cylinder may like me more and be kind to me. The technician, whom I also recognized from my previous visits, spoke for his machine and told me to keep the scarf, even if part of the operation was concerned with throat and neck. On the spot though, somehow, this did not feel right. I remembered, once in there, that i was going to find it hard to breathe, because of the claustrophobic effect of this rounded coffin right above one’s nose, and the little room the gurney allows for the arms while in lying position. I did not need something else around my neck, so, in spite of his insistence, I threw my scarf away. Let the picture be as clear as it can, I thought, even if for the computer eye the scarf is invisible. As the scanned object, you are of course not supposed to wear jewelry or glasses lest they become a suspicious growth attached to your limbs. Some new bone-like, or kist-like formation. Some calcified tissue, or the residue of a long forgotten infection. Granuloma.

These past weeks we have been plagued again by small yet upsetting animal body concerns. Rocky has had not two, but three molars extracted. Soft food agrees with him just fine for the moment and we suppose some field mice shall live longer if not quieter from now on. After which we went to Kingston in order to have the results of the scan properly interpreted by specialists. My family doctor had seen those and panicked almost as badly as I had, when I misplaced my keys. In fact I spent some time in his office trying to cool things down. For both our sake. "Something soft" and new was showing in the vertebrae atop of the one lost. "Something fuzzy" and new was showing in the lower right lung, there where things, bits aspirated haphazardly end up lodging. Had I aspirated anything of note lately? Probably not, but I could not remember. Maybe at night? No way! intervened Colin vehemently, as if he spent his nights watching my every breath. She has No sleep apnea! It is true that sometimes I feel as if I tumble down, inwardly, sucked by the bottomless pit of dark nonexistence, breathless and gagging. But don't we all? The hour though was not to existential musigs, nor angst. We probably only had 12 minutes in his book of obligatory encounters. Did I sleep poorly? Did I wake up in the morning feeling poorly rested? Under Colin's watchful gaze and barely contained inner outrage, I tried to stay balanced. Then filled, albeit conservatively, a questionnaire asking kindly misleading questions. This form seemed addressed to slowing down seniors of vintage gold. It wanted to know whether I fell asleep while entertaining casual conversations with a group of acquaintances. Hell no! Not me! I'm alert like a squirrel, am following with raptured attention everybody's every word, comment wittily and only fall asleep when the situation warrants such selfish behavior. Colin was afraid the lung specialist would take away my driver's license over a thing I never aspired in the first place.

Ben, on the other hand, aspired he has. One evening just a few days ago, while alone at home, like some billy whose mother goat had warned profusely, but to no avail, he encountered head on - that is, muzzle and soft tissue inside the mouth - the old porcupine. Remeber how Alice was the first to meet him, and only showed quill-trophy on her forearm? Remember how Rocky’s turn came, one weekend again, he whose mouth bore, between here and Peterborough, where the only free vet was available, both mustache and beard? It was already past nine when Ben had to be rushed by a super-tired, overworked, hungry Colin to the nearest emergency animal hospital, an hour away from home. More than 80 extracted quills later and he is almost as new, although hesitant to go to the dog enclosure at the back of the house, which is supposed to be their safe powder room but where, to my dismay, the encounter with this shrewd, cunning, wallet-depleating enemy took place. In fact nowhere around here is there a safe place to loiter about, to smell the tracks of passing or dwelling animal coworkers without becoming the target of their survival techniques.

There will be another CT scan in December, so we know for sure, as "for sure" as possible, what my lung swallowed. In the meantime, I run into an old photograph (circa 1935) of my grandmother’s and her two children. I worked at this portrait for a few days, thankful, first, that this young woman, then of twenty-two years, and in the throws of poverty, had found the means to be photographed, as if by surprise, for they do not seem to be specially appointed, with her children: my father, five, and his sister, two. Many other thoughts, of course, nourished my concentration and gave to my replica the urgent sense of purpose this old portrait communicates, to me at least. Those children, so serious and for good reason aware, much too early, of the impending struggle where life makes her uncertain nest: is it not mysterious how such a simple, un-staged artifact, has the strength to bring forth and preserve the sense of forthcoming struggles?