Centipede Dreams, scar from a benign tumor taken out when I was 12 (37 years ago), September 2010, photo © 2010 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.
Most people no longer ask about the large blemish I have in the center of my throat, down where my larynx meets my chest. It’s a tracheotomy scar that must be getting lighter the longer I have it. When I was a kid, it wasn’t uncommon for perfect strangers to approach me in public places and ask, “What happened there?”
I had the tracheotomy at age 18 months after a croup turned to pneumonia. It was an emergency operation, part of my childhood mythology, the small Mexican doctor with wild hair who stabbed open a hole in my trachea so I could breathe. She had a frantic look in her eye, her hair loose and Bride-of-Frankenstein-like, and she held the sharp instrument up in the air before bringing it down to pierce my throat.
That’s the image I hold of her anyway, an image formed out of the seemingly hundreds of times I heard my parents tell the story. It was the kind of improbable drama — the dying child whose life is saved by a small doctor who is both Mexican and a woman — with a happy ending that held friends and relatives rapt year after year. I loved the attention, standing near my parents, Mom nudging me to lift my chin so everyone could see the scar. A few gentle strokes of her fingers on the chamois-soft skin, rubbing as if to say, “See, it’s permanent.”
In each telling I embellished the imagery. When my parents described the moment they decided to rush me to the hospital, how my lips had turned blue and I’d stopped breathing, my mind’s eye pictured the veins and blood from my body shimmering purple through translucent skin. Or when Mom and Dad said that my hair went from straight to curly “just like that” as I lay in the oxygen tent in ICU, I saw it happening as if in time lapse photography. Like the stockinged feet of the Wicked Witch of the West curling after Dorothy removes the ruby slippers, so went my hair, forming into tiny ringlets all over my head.
It must be natural, I think, for a young kid to turn her childhood stories into morbid scenes, but what strikes me is how much staying power those scenes have. I don’t replace them with more reasonable pictures — a modest Mexican woman with hair pulled back in a bun, a ride on the gurney into a stark emergency room at the hospital. No, my scenes involve my parents bursting through a set of double doors, my limp blue body draped across Dad’s arms, them watching in horror as the doctor plunges a knife — or better, a pair of sharp scissors — into my throat. Or my parents watching in awe as my hair springs up in a bouquet of curl all around my head, like an angel’s.
I don’t have such vivid imagery when it comes to the scar on my knee, although being that I got it at the impressionable age of 12, I did manage to fabricate a mythology around that one, too. I developed a crush on the orthopedic surgeon who did the procedure — my parents said he looked like a hippie, which made him all the more intriguing. In my mind, his golden hair flows out from under a light blue surgeon’s cap and he dons a small silver hoop in his ear. I clearly recall him coming to visit me after the operation, carrying the kind of Bell jar used for canning fruit. Inside is my white globular tumor floating in a yellowish brine. I’m surprised it isn’t perfectly round, like a golf ball.
The scar from that procedure resembles a centipede on the inside of my right knee, and once after a real centipede crawled across my leg while I played hide-and-seek in the coat closet, I decided to tell any kid who asked me how I got the scar that it was left there by a centipede that seared itself into my skin. “That’s how centipedes bite,” I told them, “they burn themselves right into you.”
Kids looked at me with respect after that, but my story fell apart once they began asking all the questions that come with the idea of centipede-as-branding-iron. “What happened to the centipede?” “Well, it dried up and fell off,” I said one time, and then another time, “It dissolved right into the skin, see?, you can still see parts of it here.” Soon I became tired of the technicality of it all, I couldn’t keep the story straight and over time I left behind the centipede saga and kept only the image of my long-haired doctor.
My latest epic scar involves two puncture wounds on the outer bridge of my nose, close to my eyes, that our rooster Lindo gave me when he tried blinding me with his spurs. Lindo and I shared a mutual animosity, he was a beautiful cocky bird who had such an intense hatred that the moment he spied me coming out the door he would strut my way with the intent to fight. I took to carrying a bundle of dried bamboo stalks, which I used to whack him as I made my way to whatever part of the yard I needed to go. He’d come after me again and again until my stalks splintered into pieces, at which point I took off at a full out run.
Ultimately he got the better of me, one evening when I let down my guard. I had gone armed only with a bowl of compost into the bird pen. I bent down to throw a piece of lettuce to the bunny who lived there with the roosters, turkeys, and ducks, and Lindo saw his opening. He flew up at my face, spurs aimed at my eyes. He almost got them, too, and I’m not embellishing when I say that I traumatized my youngest daughter when I stood up screaming, blood streaming like tears down my cheeks.
The strange thing is that no one notices the scars unless I point them out. One time, at a luncheon in China, I sat next to a German man who had the exact same two puncture wound scars near his eyes. All through lunch, I wanted to ask if he, too, had been attacked by a rooster. But I barely knew the man. I tried to imagine every other possible reason he might have carried scars identical to mine. Maybe he’d suffered terrible acne that resulted in two pimples near his eyes. Or perhaps as a teen he wore black leather and sported a purple Mohawk and a piece of bone pierced through the bridge of his nose.
In the end, I couldn’t think of a way to broach the subject without embarrassing us both or drawing attention from the six other European men at the table. However, in my mind, I am certain that the very thing that happened to me also happened to him. Anything is possible.
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Postscript: This essay is based on a 15-minute Writing Practice in response to WRITING TOPIC – SCARS. The details that emerged from my Writing Practice were similar to other times when I’ve done timed writing that led to stories about my tracheotomy (specifically here and here) so I figured it was time to polish the narrative. Plus, since it contains important elements of my life story, especially my earliest years, I wanted to go with the energy, hoping it might turn into something I can weave later into memoir.
Wow, yb, you have some of the most interesting and compelling stories about scar history.
Wild Mexican-woman doctor stabbing your throat with a pair of scissors while simultaneously curling your hair. Wow, what an image to hold of the power of a woman. Oooh, I so love stories of strength, especially ones with happy endings.
And your hippie doctor must have been mysterious and crush-worthy to a 12 year old. Sweet. He sure did leave a long scar though, hmm? Centipede? Funny, funny…
However I don;t like your Lindo story at al. That mean ol’
rooster could have hurt you seriously. I hope he is no longer around. Brrrrr! Though it is rather an interesting observation about the guy’s similar scars. I wonder how he DID get his…
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Active imagination 😉
Lindo is not around. Jim was about to twist his neck right then and there, until I intervened (something about forgiveness, or maybe temporary insanity caused by the puncture wounds).
We had to pay $5 for a local feed store to take Lindo into what we fondly referred to as the Rooster Witness Protection Program. I think this might have been the year before cockfighting was made illegal in NM. We didn’t ask where Lindo was going. All we knew was that he would not be placed where he could harm anyone else.
I couldn’t get a good shot of my puncture wounds, but here’s an attempt:
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Lindo probably is living a quiet life on some farm in New Mexico humbled by his experience of going into the witness protection program.
Loved the centipede story and the explanations you came up with. I could see the centipede glowing red hot as it branded your leg and then dropping off or melting into your skin to stay forever as a reminder NOT to play with a centipede or live to regret it.
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The posting of the writing practice about scars and the polished piece “Centipede Dreams” illustrates the beauty of writing practice and how it allows us to write down anything and then take that and mold it into a “final” product for publication.
At first I thought you had posted it twice by mistake and then I read both of them. Most of the information is contained in the practice, but you expand and even out the piece in the most recent post. Good example for people who want to see what writing practice can do.
Thanks for posting both pieces…even if it did confuse me at first (but, hey, it’s early in the morning for me).
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I’m so glad it eventually made sense, Bob. I should have put the Postscript as a Prologue. 🙂
I can still remember one time when Natalie used a writing practice — was it one of yours? — to illustrate how even small changes can make a narrative punch when it’s done. I tend to edit a good amount, more than what she demonstrated, but then there’s always the risk of over-working a piece.
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I doubt Lindo is still alive. Chickens only live about five or so years, I think. He would have been about that age now.
But I like the thought of him on a farm, rehabilitated. 8)
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ybonesy, great read on Scars. It’s so cool to see how your Centipeded piece went from PRACTICE: SCARS – 15min (LINK) to a finished piece. It made me want to compare them and see what the differences were. I see a lot of detail added, a tightening up, too, that pulls the piece together. I can totally see how these are a part of your childhood mythology.
I remember when the rooster attacked you. That was scary. It was so close to your eye. I’m thinking now about my sister and how she has a story about getting stung by a ton of bees that got tangled in her hair when she was younger. My brothers had something to do with it, some mischief where I think they had her poke the hive, not knowing what she was doing. It’s part of our family history. But I can tell she still feels the trauma when she thinks about it. My brother Louis was sat on a fire ant pile by another brother when he was young. Crazy.
Great photo. I found when I was photographing my scars that it’s hard to get them to show up the way they do to each of us. Skin is hard to photograph.
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Yes, I remember both those stories from your past, QM. When you think about it, it seems our lives get distilled into a handful, maybe a dozen, of memorable stories told over and over.
I enjoy the editing process. I used to hate to edit my own work, but something shifted in recent years. Maybe after writing the essays for publication–I don’t know, I just feel I’m more objective with my own work than I used to be. I find I’ll keep going back to a certain sentence or phrase and struggle with it. Often I just need cut it out altogether. Then things suddenly work.
That scar on my knee is still so shiny, so doing the B/W treatment worked well to pop the scar. My other scars are harder to photograph. But the knee scar is amazingly still very visible.
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I often wonder how many of our childhood “memories” are actual memories and how many are “synthesized” memories that have become ours after hearing our parents tell the story over and over again. To me, it’s intriguing.
I see at least a couple of short stories here from this material. You should start collecting them for a volume, either of your own or perhaps an anthology with short memoir pieces written by some of us out here in CyberLandia.
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I never knew that scar was from a tumor. I am also guilty of asking if it had come from a centipede bite/burn. How funny
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Yeah, the other part I remember so clearly is the whole diagnosis. I found the tumor while sitting in church, bored and watching my legs swing. I had such skinny legs and knocked knees, and I was wearing a hand-me-down dress, sitting next to Dad. The tumor was like a ball under my skin, and it moved every time I swung my leg.
I showed it to Dad, and then we showed it to Mom when we got home. I remember her panicking, saying the word “tumor” and the word “cancer” and Mom cried, and I knew it wasn’t good.
Our doctor, Dr. Teague, misdiagnosed it as a piece of bone that must have broken off, maybe when I was jumping around, and was stuck there under my skin. (I also vaguely recall Mom saying that Dr. Teague left a piece of sponge in someone’s body during an operation and that he was incompetent, etc., etc., but I don’t know if that really happened.) After another trip back to see Dr. Teague and the same diagnosis, Mom insisted he send us to an orthopedic surgeon for a second opinion.
This is where the hippie doctor comes in. He was supposed to be the best in the city, and right away he said, “Ah, this is an [xyz] tumor, you see them a lot on horses, and they’re completely benign.” That’s when I learned the difference between the words “benign” and “malignant.” (BTW, I wish I could remember the name of the type of tumor it was. And now that I know more about tumors, one sign that this one was benign was the fact that it was perfectly round and that it moved–wasn’t attached to the bone.)
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Sorry for the late entrance! Had a heck of a month!
That is a beautiful scar yb! It kinda reminds me of a delphinum stock. Beautiful flowers as well!
If I was you, I’d take Lindo (caged) on your next trip to China. He’d learn how good he’s got it rather quickly. 😉
BTW…I have my own scar down my left cheek (the one that shows in public) and I think it gives me mystery.
Howdy QM! Howdy Liz!
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Heather, you don’t know how many times I’ve thought of you lately! I keep thinking, Where’s Heather? Surely she hasn’t stopped blogging. I will get over to your place soon. I bet by now you have started divulging news of the 2010 Queen of Halloween Extravaganza. I can’t wait to know what the theme is. Can you outdo yourself yet again? I think not. Alien Invasion last year was just too awesome.
A delphinium stock!? Well, that is one of my favorite flowers, although for the life of me I can not get them to live. I planted another this past summer and then I let it die. Ack. Ah, I just went and took a look at the photo, and I see it. The little blooms along the stalk. Love it!
A scar down your left cheek would lend mystery. I would stare at it and make up all sorts of exotic reasons for it’s being there. She used to be a secret agent who was tortured by a sick Russian. She fell headlong through a skylight. A bloodletting ritual to treat mumps. Hmmm, what else could it be? Do share whatever stories you’ve come up with to those who ask. 8)
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No, I’m alive and well but have been “non-sitting” due to some very painful “sitting bones”. I can’t begin to pronounce the true name of the affliction but the Doctors seem very pleased that they can…something that has to do with the Sacrum and the Coccyx. In technical “H” terms…the bones at the top of your butt-crack are being smooshed. Hey, I googled! Anyway, like you, I thought it was Sciatica…who knew! All I can say is if you sit at a computer (any and all of you) make sure it’s cushioned really well and not one of those fancy hard ones. I am currently sitting on a “donut” and it ain’t the jelly kind. I think Lytton Strachey sat on one too (for a different affliction) so I’m in good company 😉
YB, you mentioned on my Blog that you have sciatica and that you also sit long hours computing. “This thing” and “that thing” are very similar…yet different…and I have had both. Make sure that chair is a good one so this doesn’t happen to you. The exercises required are not attractive to anyone….lots of grunting and facial contortion (and that’s just one of my cats watching).
Now, as for the health alert, I will come to a closure… I’m starting to sound like my belated Grandmother with her pains…
On a happier not: I am definitely using that “blood letting ritual”. That is just too cool. :O
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Ah, yes, sciatica is painful but your pain sounded much more grave. Did I read that your pelvis is actually being twisted by the affliction?! Not to mention, smooshed butt cracks–ouch.
I wish you a speedy recovery, once the treatment begins in earnest. And until then, a Hallerrific diversion. 8)
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Belatedly, I want to add a brief comment to your Scars piece – yes, the rewriting is fascinating…and how our memories distort and expand on reality …I have a long scar on my inner right thigh, same as you – it was Easter Sunday and my 5th birthday, I was dressed in a fancy church dress and patent leather shoes, and I climbed the drainpipe to the roof and slid down…shocking red slit in my leg! I do remember the stitches, and later telling people I had a tumor removed! Also I was attacked by a neighbor’s rooster in my back yard years back, and still have punctures in my left thigh. Other scars told me right from left (look at hand, that is the left one with the big round hole in it) and remind me of tomboy escapades and flipping off a motorcycle. Our bodies carry alot of history! LOve the photo, btw, of your centipede. ;>)
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Heather, hello to you, too, and a big hug (and also from Liz). Sounds like you’ve been going through a lot with the sitting bones. Sending good energy your way. Like ybonesy, I always think of you this time of year, when Halloween is right around the corner. You are the Queen of Halloween. All Hallows Day. It’s all cool and Fall-like in Minnesota. And I love October!
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[…] showed up on a walk on the ditch that my daughter and I took shortly after I wrote the piece Centipede Dreams. My daughter was in no mood to hang out with me while I picked up a small stick and caused the […]
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lil, I have to admit that it took me some time to be able to read your comment and fully process it. I have that “fainting at the site of blood” infliction, and every time I got to the “shocking red slit in my leg,” I got a little woozy thinking of it. Whew, even writing that raises my pulse a wee bit.
And to think you told people it got there because you got a tumor removed! Weird! Perhaps you dreamed of a good-looking hippie doctor who was know for taking tumors out of knee areas. 8)
Yes, our bodies carry so much history. I remember riding on the back of a motorcycle with my then brother-in-law, I was in my nightgown because it was evening and Mom always made me get ready for bed. He drove down to the end of our lane, which was a tight cul de sac with gravel at the end. While making the tight turn, he hit the gravel and dropped the bike, spilling both of us onto the road. I got a good road rash out of that, but I still have three scars on my knee, pretty visible. Gosh, that must have happened at about age 8 or 10.
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