March 29, 1955, two months before my twentieth birthday, began with sunshine and cloudless skies, and we opened the window of our sorority-house room to let in the gentle spring breeze. Walking to the University of Texas campus that morning was a joy. As I breathed in the scents of spring, I had no inkling that before the day was over, my life would change.
Changed Body, Unchanged Life Read More »
You can’t see it, the way it’s tucked under a fold of skin, but I can’t forget that it’s there. I see it whenever I look in the mirror at my shoulder-length hair and remember—despite my best efforts not to—the months when large bald spots dotted the crown of my head.
Moving across the ice in jerky strokes, I find myself face down on the rink, the bone of my chin bursting through the skin from inside out. Mrs. Morrissey, the birthday girl’s mother, cups her hands under my chin. Blood fills this makeshift vessel and overflows onto the smooth, white ice. I have to leave before it’s time for cake because my first stitches take precedence.
Editor’s Note: This piece was awarded an honorable mention in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”
I have always been different. As a nurse I was a late bloomer, though I’d always felt passionately drawn to the profession.
I was born to nurse. This was evident even when I was a young child; I bathed my grandmother’s amputated leg while the other kids played in the yard. Although I had planned to go to nursing school after graduation, I took a seventeen-year detour and ultimately entered as a nontraditional student.
As a fan of mysteries, I often read about or watch television shows in which the deceased, found in the woods or water, can only be identified through dental records since no scars mark their bodies. I jokingly remind my children that should I go missing, my body will be easy to identify.
The Walking Wounded Read More »
Dear readers,
My physical scars are hardly worth mentioning. I have a scar on my back where a surgeon removed a lipoma–a fatty lump the size of a golf ball–twenty years ago. On my abdomen, I have a few smaller, more recent scars from laparoscopic prostate surgery.
I’m lucky. The scars don’t bother me. Hardly anyone notices them. And if I’m wearing a bathing suit, the appearance of a scar on a man suggests something heroic–a wound inflicted in battle–rather than a sign of vulnerability or an imperfection that detracts from physical beauty.
Others aren’t so fortunate.
April More Voices: Scars Read More »
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