Waiting for an Epiphany

It’s happened to me twice. Maybe it happened to you too?

Even though you know why you are sitting in a doctor’s office the actual diagnose sets upon you like a niacin rush. From the casing on your veins, from inside your head to the skin and face. You might wonder if you’ll lie down or if it’s important to use your super powers to turn back time.

The first time it happened to me was decades ago between Christmas and New Years. I was seventeen-year-old punk returned from UK not able to live with my family because I had terrible temper tantrums. I couldn’t get along.

An egg-shaped lump between my clavicle and my neck was all it took for everybody to turn their focus back on me. I’d had a biopsy and here we were mother and me to hear the results.

Wait for it, because a doctor always hesitates before the sentence: “You have cancer.

Hodgkin’s, stage three we found out after four months of further diagnosis. Then there was three months of radiation treatment and “Bam” just like that my bad moods turned into PTSD. I was a fucked up street kid complete with addictions and acting out. I was a striper and I remember standing in a medium of a roadway hooking, bad life-threatening decisions. I made it through all that, many didn’t but I did.

The second time was light years later. Because of an undiagnosed shortness of breath I was having tests again and was passed up the line to have a chat with another doctor. We talked for 30 minutes before I realized he was surgeon and planning to rebuild my radiation damages heart within the week. I have new parts. Like Blade Runner I have a serial number: 86260580. There are many things about a mechanical aorta the appeal to my punk side: I eat rat poison, I have a huge scar, I'm part mechanical and a little fake. There is a little tapping sound I can always hear. I’m a survivor, what even that means.