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Postsurgery

Postsurgery It is not self-pity that brings me to write about this knifed body. It is the quest to understand the change. My abdomen, though never flat, was smooth. Now a scar ratchets up from pubic bone to navel. Steri strips and blood scabs will slough off and cocoa butter will lighten the line, yet I am different in this vessel, only a vessel. I miss what was there and imagine the cavity where the delicate tube kissed the ovary then twisted to seduce the appendix, a messy relationship, a bloody ménage à trois that spermless spawned an offspring, a red mass of questions, an apple-sized engulfment intent on murder-suicide. Morphine dreams I cannot remember; friends' voices receding from my consciousness. At night, surgeons appear like specters; a chaplain in horn-rimmed glasses holds my hand, prays at my fears; the roommate snores over the thin voices of the TV she has left on. I gaze through open slats of blinds at stars, crave to break through glass and steel, to breathe. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png JAMA American Medical Association

Postsurgery

JAMA , Volume 307 (6) – Feb 8, 2012

Postsurgery

Abstract

It is not self-pity that brings me to write about this knifed body. It is the quest to understand the change. My abdomen, though never flat, was smooth. Now a scar ratchets up from pubic bone to navel. Steri strips and blood scabs will slough off and cocoa butter will lighten the line, yet I am different in this vessel, only a vessel. I miss what was there and imagine the cavity where the delicate tube kissed the ovary then twisted to seduce the appendix, a messy relationship, a bloody...
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Publisher
American Medical Association
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 American Medical Association. All Rights Reserved.
ISSN
0098-7484
eISSN
1538-3598
DOI
10.1001/jama.2011.2007
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

It is not self-pity that brings me to write about this knifed body. It is the quest to understand the change. My abdomen, though never flat, was smooth. Now a scar ratchets up from pubic bone to navel. Steri strips and blood scabs will slough off and cocoa butter will lighten the line, yet I am different in this vessel, only a vessel. I miss what was there and imagine the cavity where the delicate tube kissed the ovary then twisted to seduce the appendix, a messy relationship, a bloody ménage à trois that spermless spawned an offspring, a red mass of questions, an apple-sized engulfment intent on murder-suicide. Morphine dreams I cannot remember; friends' voices receding from my consciousness. At night, surgeons appear like specters; a chaplain in horn-rimmed glasses holds my hand, prays at my fears; the roommate snores over the thin voices of the TV she has left on. I gaze through open slats of blinds at stars, crave to break through glass and steel, to breathe.

Journal

JAMAAmerican Medical Association

Published: Feb 8, 2012

There are no references for this article.