We Are Zoo Creatures

My body is in fact defunct. My primordial clay was improperly handled and sent down the assembly line too soon. Perhaps in being born a month early (apparently I was tired of the womb and ready to kick the bucket as I wrapped my umbilical cord around my neck three times)I permanently scarred my chances of having a fully functioning body. All of my organs are fully formed but a few of them seem to malfunction quite a lot of the time--every few days or so.

Oh yes, my organs, how they do hate me.

I have since grown accustomed to not being able to eat without fear of painful intestinal/stomach episode. I have grown accustomed to my joints not lining up properly. I have grown accustomed to my twisted spine.

Or, more accurately, I have grown accustomed to chronic pain. It's odd to hear people six decades older than me complaining of the pains I have now. I fear old age. I fear I will be wheel chair bound. But mostly, I fear the unknown. Some of my ailments have names, like scoliosis. Others do not. For a brief, terrifying summer I believed I had cancer of breast and intestinal natures. Eventually, it was discovered the issue was not cancerous, but quite heretofore unknown. I was sent home, not necessarily living or dying or knowing which of those two labels was more accurate but in a limbo I continue to exist in.

Cancer is terrifying. Everyone has an expiration date but the glory of not knowing how soon or far off it may be is often underestimated. Cancer patients can morbidly watch death approach on a speeding train, BigRig, or whatever vehicle of their choice. Either way, they watch the end approach. I am lucky in that I cannot see mine.

However, when in limbo you have no such comforts of "I eat healthy, live healthy and am not cancerous and therefore will live to be old barring car accident or freak lightning storm". I have: It could be nothing. I could be the next new disease that causes slow, lingering death. It could make me live to be 150. I could die tomorrow.

Limbo is terrible. I now understand why the Pope got rid of it. I wish he could banish it from my body.

And on that happy note, I leave you with Summer Surgeries, a full and far more amusing account of the above ramblings