A tumor grows in the center of her brain. About the size of a small avocado, or a large walnut. If we were to open her skull and bisect her brain, we'd see that the tumor is the color of charcoal - jet black- and the consistency of rotting fruit - fleshy, soft to the touch, quick to disintegrate. If we leaned down close to the tumor and caught a whiff we might be taken aback by its stench; the smell of rotting meat, the odor of a rat, long dead, decomposing in the attic.
No one is yet aware of this tumor. At least, not anyone from the medical field. She didn't need an official prognosis; she isn't interested in x-rays and MRIs and chemical dyes. She didn't need to spend hundreds of dollars - perhaps thousands, considering the substantial deductable built into her health insurance - paying doctors for an opinion about something she is already familiar with.
She's quite aware that something has gone terribly wrong with her thinking, though she's done a tremendous job of hiding her concerns from anyone. Her inability to add and subtract simple equations, the sudden onset of color blindness. The strange ripple in her reasoning. She senses a correlation between her lifelong tendency toward negative thinking and this ball of black rot growin in her brain. She feels it's a direct manifestation of her years of anger and hatred, emotions she's kept bottled up so long they've obviously begun to form a dark fleshy mass of rebellion.
Who knows really when it struck her to attempt self surgery to deal with the problem. She went about her preparations as if in a dream - getting a Makita drill, finding the right bit, fashioning a suction device out of a turkey baster and a length of rubber surgical tubing. The morphine she'd been stocking up in the bathroom cabinet came from her father's prescription - he'd died late last year of lung cancer, and she was in charge of caring for him up until his very last days, when she finally succumbed to checking him into a hospice. But not before she raided his painkiller stash.
She'd taken her vacation leave from work, figuring that it might take a few days to recuperate. She studied maps of the human skull on the Internet, practicing the positioning of the drill at a slightly up angle, pressed against her temple. As weeks passed, she grew more confident that she could pull it off without a hitch; that soon, this dark black rot growing in her brain would finally be excised for good, doctors and insurance be damned.
And suddenly here we were; tomorrow was the big day. She put extra food in the cat's bowl, turned off the gas to the house, and unplugged the phone. She took a long bath, taking special pains to condition her hair and wrap it in curlers and a big, fluffy towel. She watched her favorite TV programs, lounging in her robe and slippers, drinking a martini and having a cigarette indoors, something she never did anymore. She went to sleep knowing that all would end up well.
No one is yet aware of this tumor. At least, not anyone from the medical field. She didn't need an official prognosis; she isn't interested in x-rays and MRIs and chemical dyes. She didn't need to spend hundreds of dollars - perhaps thousands, considering the substantial deductable built into her health insurance - paying doctors for an opinion about something she is already familiar with.
She's quite aware that something has gone terribly wrong with her thinking, though she's done a tremendous job of hiding her concerns from anyone. Her inability to add and subtract simple equations, the sudden onset of color blindness. The strange ripple in her reasoning. She senses a correlation between her lifelong tendency toward negative thinking and this ball of black rot growin in her brain. She feels it's a direct manifestation of her years of anger and hatred, emotions she's kept bottled up so long they've obviously begun to form a dark fleshy mass of rebellion.
Who knows really when it struck her to attempt self surgery to deal with the problem. She went about her preparations as if in a dream - getting a Makita drill, finding the right bit, fashioning a suction device out of a turkey baster and a length of rubber surgical tubing. The morphine she'd been stocking up in the bathroom cabinet came from her father's prescription - he'd died late last year of lung cancer, and she was in charge of caring for him up until his very last days, when she finally succumbed to checking him into a hospice. But not before she raided his painkiller stash.
She'd taken her vacation leave from work, figuring that it might take a few days to recuperate. She studied maps of the human skull on the Internet, practicing the positioning of the drill at a slightly up angle, pressed against her temple. As weeks passed, she grew more confident that she could pull it off without a hitch; that soon, this dark black rot growing in her brain would finally be excised for good, doctors and insurance be damned.
And suddenly here we were; tomorrow was the big day. She put extra food in the cat's bowl, turned off the gas to the house, and unplugged the phone. She took a long bath, taking special pains to condition her hair and wrap it in curlers and a big, fluffy towel. She watched her favorite TV programs, lounging in her robe and slippers, drinking a martini and having a cigarette indoors, something she never did anymore. She went to sleep knowing that all would end up well.
posted by morphitologist at
9:59 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home