|
THE THINGS I'VE
CARRIED
In the left pocket of my pants, each and every day, I carry two to
four tissues, two Imodium pills (in the blister wrap) and one plastic
bag, the long, skinny type used for newspapers, carefully folded in a
such a way that it takes up a small amount of space but can be easily
unfurled in case of emergency.
In my right pocket are my keys, change, more tissues, sometimes a cell
phone, and often a pen. But these are not the necessities.
They can do little to spare me from public humiliation when the fury of
Crohn’s hits. A key is a poor stand-in for toilet paper; a cell
phone cannot contain the effects of nausea; coins can do little to calm
a roiling gastrointestinal tract.
Most days, I never reach into my left pocket. It is a minor
victory, a quiet joy, to move the contents from one pair of pants to
the next each morning – it is a sign that another day has passed
without incident. But though I was never a Boy Scout – I was a
Cub Scout for a few months, an odd experience that need not be
recounted here – I still live by their motto: Be prepared.
And so I carry the Crohn’s kit. Imodium, just in case I find
myself in a remote location or a situation in which I will be unable to
easily reach a bathroom for any lengthy amount of time, such as five
minutes. Tissues, in case I find myself in a bathroom lacking
toilet paper – one would think the presence of TP would be considered a
priority by most people, but apparently this is not the case. A
plastic bag, for the worst case scenario – it prevents misery from
becoming spectacle, containing the effects of illness and providing
disposal for soiled undergarments.
These are the things I carry every day.
There other things, bigger things, things of more importance and
gravity, that I have carried, in a bag or on my person.
For three months, I carried a plastic bag, dangling from my abdominal
area. For very long three months, during my freshman year of
college, I had
a colostomy, and therefore a colostomy bag, a plastic appendage that
served as something of a prosthetic rectum, sort of, kind of.
Excrement poured into it, sometimes unannounced, which was an
interesting experience in social situations or in the
middle of a lecture.
I did not tell anyone about this thing I carried on my body, but I
always felt as though everyone knew. I wore baggy clothes, but
even loose-fitting shirts couldn’t always hide the fact that there was
a weird-looking bulge on my body. The glue that held it in place
itched constantly and was continually threatening to fail, and I was
afraid, every moment of every day, that any sudden movement would send
the whole disgusting thing falling to the ground for all the world to
see (and to, presumably, recoil in horror). I carried it out of
necessity, and with it carried its accessory baggage: psychological
turmoil, constant anxiety and paranoia, that someone would see it, that
someone would smell it, that people would stare, or that it would
become infected. Or that it would become permanent, that it would
become something that I didn’t just carry, since that word implies that
the item can be discarded, but that was a part of my being and my
identity.
Thankfully, my colon was eventually re-connected. It had never
occurred to
me that one day I would deeply value the ability to shit out of the
proper orifice. Now, when I see the scars on my abdomen every
day, evidence of those three months and the emergency surgery that
preceded The Bag, I give silent thanks that my body parts are again
fully-intact, with each piece properly assembled.
I have also carried an IV line in my right arm. This was far less
of a burden than a colostomy bag – less maintenance, less embarrassing
– but still an enormous mental weight. With the line came IV
bags, filled with vitamins and glucose-enriched saline, a solution
intended to boost my weight and energy after an extended
hospitalization and a longer period of unnoticed malnutrition. I
did not carry the bags very
far, having only to use them at night as I slept. Each evening, I
attached a new bag to my line, hooked up the pump, and went to
sleep. Ten hours and 1,100 milliliters of elixir-of-life later, I
shut off the pump, unhooked the line, and went about my life.
With the line, as with The Bag, came paranoia and anxiety, and sense
that I was, in some sense, a freak: 99 percent human, one percent
robot. With the line, I carried a massive square of clear
adhesive covering the entry site, and a piece of cloth that fit neatly
over my upper arm, hiding the coiled line beneath a peach-colored
cotton
band. About an inch of the band showed when I wore a
short-sleeved shirt, and it elicited occasional comments from
acquaintances who thought perhaps I had skinned my arm. Each
morning, before showering, I had to wrap the band, dressing, and site
in plastic, which greatly restricted my movement. My scrubbing
abilities diminished, I always left the shower still feeling slightly
dirty, a problem compounded by the brevity of each shower. I
became Mr. Speedy and Efficient, thanks to my paranoia and hypochondria
– water, soap and dirt could, potentially, seep into the dressing,
which could, potentially, cause infection, which would, potentially,
cause more pain and indignity.
Eventually, the site did start to become infected, so a nurse came to
my house and pulled it. No line meant more sleep and longer (and
more effective) showers. It meant I could inline skate without
worrying that a fall could cause the line – which stretched nearly to
my heart – to snap, pop or otherwise break in some spectacular and
dangerous manner, and that I could be patted on the back without
flinching. It meant that I would no longer have to carry in my
mind the procedures for dealing with an internally broken line and for
assessing whether a sudden chest pain was due to infection or other
potential harmful effects of the length of tubing that had become my
personal burden, a part of my identity, and one of which I was deeply
ashamed.
I should note
that I ripped off the title of this piece, and its underlying concept,
from one of my favorite books, Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried.
|
