One of the few positives of the whole cancer experience has been being able to see live footage from inside my body. I’ve always taken the internal functions and structure of my body for granted; stuff goes in, stuff comes out. Lather, rinse, repeat. This changes when you’re laying on a table watching a camera snake through your system in technicolor. Huh. I always pictured things less, um, scrunched up…that’s a nice shade of pink though…Whoa, what the fuck is that? It was the tumor, looking decidedly out-of-place, jaundice and red-splotched. The camera paused briefly, then attacked it like a snake, taking biopsy samples and tattooing the sickly yellow flesh with black ink before slithering back out.

This was several months ago, but I find myself thinking about this often. I’ll never be an expectant mother, but I imagine that mine was the exact opposite feeling of an ultrasound. I’d watched the enemy going about the business of growing its mass and trying to kill me. It’s gone now. I assume frozen or pickled at Hopkins for further study. See you in hell!

The X-ray and contrast work done last Friday was an entirely different experience. Art film versus first-person shooter. As I lay on a table, a black-and-white X-ray monitor showed a dark plume of gastrografin (a barium substitute) enter my colon while the doctor took pictures. The table tilted and moved, and I rolled around as the doctor ordered to change the angles and get better shots. The darkness spread. I think I saw the spot where the surgery took place – a uniform ring among the asymmetrical where the tumor and surrounding colon had been. If they were looking for leakage, I didn’t see any. It was hypnotic. If they’d let me, I would have watched that monitor all day.