tattoos

Imagine yourself lying down on your back in a quiet place. You’re relaxed. Overhead you see leaves with dew drops on them. Young beautiful women walk around in bobbing pony tails, pink outfits, and warm, cheerful voices. You are getting tattoos, four of them, delicate things that no one will see but your spouse. And the rays will be shining down soon, and you’ll be spraying yourself with lotion to avoid the sunburn. But you won’t. Not completely, because you’re here every day for the next month and a half. In this quiet place. With the young beautiful women helping you lie down in comfort, relaxed, with your arm over your head and a part of you exposed to the rays that burn, hopefully burn what doesn’t fit in this scenario, stuff that grows too fast, stuff that moves too fast, stuff that just takes over when everything else is calm and quiet and peaceful inside you.

After the poison, after the slash, now comes the burn. The radiologist—this guy is smooth, experienced, suave with his warnings that “You won’t like me once we get started,” Dr Smooth explains that it is possible that since there was once cancer in the lymph nodes, and no one knows how much, something could have leaked out into the surrounding tissue, and even if it didn’t show up in the pathology report, it could still be there, microscopic, menacing, waiting until I’m not on the attack any more, waiting to pounce. I can tell others have asked him whether this is really necessary now, after the surgery has done its job and the pathology report comes back clear, and he says, “As I have told many others before you, it’s your surgeon that sent you to see me. What does that tell you?” There is no carrot here. Only the stick.  He adds that since it’s a HER2+ cancer, he’s going to add a booster for free, five more treatments, just for fun, just targeting the original area, just in case. “But it’s your choice. You don’t have to.” And I’m supposed to know what to choose. And he holds his leathery hand out to shake an agreement out of me that I don’t want to make, and Robert shakes, too, as the caregiver, so we’re committed now to this sunshine room, my life for the next month and a half.

And he recites the side effects as realistically and matter-of-factly as he can, what my chances are for getting these horrible things, a useless arm, a damaged heart, a broken rib, a scarred lung. And I think, great! How am I to make this decision? And what decision is there? And what will life look like afterward? Some things are more certain, the darkened, leathery skin, the burning, the tiredness, the fact that I won’t want to talk to Dr. Smooth (or the young beautiful women) with kindness in my voice, but just a wasted, let’s-get-through-this-and-move-on voice they don’t deserve. I think in this part of my treatment I will feel more distance between my culture and theirs. They have a rule in theirs that they have to put on cheer, but I don’t. I choose. But I’m the one burning, too. So mine’s a greater choice, and who knows if I’ll have the energy to choose it. I may just go silent, the usual choice when things hurt under the skin.

Despite the greenery with dew drops overhead and the tattoos and the soothing voices.