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| 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?
