December 4, 2012 | The Knife (from the other side)

“A stillness settles in my heart and is carried to my hand. It is the quietude of resolve layered over fear. And it is this resolve that lowers us, my knife and me, deeper and deeper into the person beneath. It is an entry into the body that is nothing like a caress; still, it is among the gentlest of acts. Then stroke and stroke again, and we are joined by other instruments, hemostats and forceps, until the wound blooms with strange flowers whose looped handles fall to the sides in steely array.” Richard Selzer, The Knife

It’s 3.20 in the morning and sleep is again failing me. The knife approaches with the ticking of each second, its blade is sharpened, poised, ready.

“Sickness” is a sallow word, one that this morning, I refuse to take on. I am not sick. I am not a victim of a shiny metal object that acts out its final will. Sometimes, I refuse to sit on the patients’ chair. I greet doctors with a firm handshake. With a newfound reverence for their profession, there is one thing that these men and women cannot forget despite its ease to do so. On the other side of the knife is life. It is entire families and memories and pains and joys. This could be you, your daughter, or your best friend. Remember this.

We were walking along the Western Seattle waterfront the other day, first grader Eve and I wandering a few paces behind collecting flowers, rocks and shells. Joy radiated from her young face as we discovered bright red berries that spurted dye and purple flowers that had already began to crust and dry as delicate paper petals. “Are you sick?” Eve suddenly asked me, he brown eyes staring up at me.

Eve may visit me in the hospital this week at the University of Washington Medical Center and I will look “sick”. My head will be shaved to the scalp and my skin flecked with lavender IV bruises and the blood that gathers in their sterile plastic tubes. I may even feel “sick,” mind spinning with anesthesia and sleep once again availing my body with hourly vitals checks to monitor that state of the life within me.

It could be easy to be a victim. Let me tell you, it is easy to walk through corridors and sit in buses and wonder, ‘why me?’. Why do I have a tumor growing in my head and you don’t? And he doesn’t, and she doesn’t? How can you laugh freely and carry on your life as if nothing is wrong? Now this – this is tempting. Yet I let my head hang and grasp onto the flecks of joy that remain in my own mind. Within me lies the hope of a contemplated future, the joy of love despite pain, the power of friends and family and an outpouring of love that only a flirtation with our own mortality can bring to the surface of our shared humanity. It’s the most powerful human force I have ever experienced.

“You cannot separate passion from pathology any more than you can separate a person's spirit from his body.” - Richard Selzer, Letters to a Young Doctor

So in saying that, and with just 15 minutes until I am expected to rise, disinfect my tired body, and catch a 4.45am cab to the Surgery Pavilion where I will be stripped into a gown, my hair shaved and my body again relegated to victimhood, I can confidently say that I am lucky. I have never felt so lucky. I spoke to a man doing vision field testing on me the other day in the Harborview hospital. We spoke of true humility that comes with realizing our own mortality – the humility that leaves you broken and open yet empowered as you realize the great power that comes from within and the power of human beings. I may not believe in a monotheistic or polytheistic god yet I’ve never so much believed in the intrinsic, loving, spiritual power of the human mind and the human body. Prayer and meditation allows us to enter into realms of power that are inaccessible simply as objects of flesh and bone. We are fighters.

The world still sleeps as I farewell another chapter in life. To be honest, I’m excited. I’m excited to smile as I fall asleep in the bed this morning and I’m excited for the crazy wigs to cover my bare head (of which we all have one) already shipping from the mighty amazon.com. I’m excited to wake and know most of the tumor is gone, excited for the crazy hippy teas I know my brother is going to make me drink as ‘treatment’ and excited to be once again able to move and run and dance with more joy and gratitude than ever before. This morning I choose to trust the knife and with honest dedication trust the power of the human soul. I choose not to be sick, and choose to remember the joy of the smallest flower and shell and spoken and unspoken word.

“You turn aside to wash your gloves. It is a ritual cleansing. One enters this temple doubly washed. Here is man as microcosm, representing in all his parts the earth, perhaps the universe.”

The knife patiently awaits and I am ready.