cardiotama.blogg.se

We are told it is in our DNA, or we are told it is in the world, or we are told it is located in the confused admixture of genes and environment that no one can locate or wants to. We are told cancer is an intruder to be fought, or an errant aspect of ourselves, or an overambitious cell type, or an analogy for capitalism, or a natural phenomenon with which to live, or a certain agent of death. There are quiet technicians, loud clatters, warmed blankets, cinematic beeps. Earmuffs on, gown on, gown removed, arms up, arms down, breathe in, breathe out, blood drawn, dye injected, wand in, wand on, moving or being moved – radiology turns a person made of feelings and flesh into a patient made of light and shadows. Welcome to the detectors with names made of letters: MRI, CT, PET. In the computer servers, our health degrades or improves. Illness that never bothered to announce itself to the senses radiates in screen life, as light is sound and is information encrypted, unencrypted, circulated, analysed, rated, studied and sold. Now you don’t have a solution to a problem, now you have a specific name for a life breaking in two. To be declared with certainty ill while feeling with certainty fine is to fall on the hardness of language without being given even an hour of soft uncertainty in which to steady oneself with pre-emptive worry. I took a photo of it from my examination bed with an iPhone.

The first tumour I ever saw was a darkness on that screen, round with a long craggy finger jutting from it. W hen the technician leaves the room, I turn my head towards the screen to interpret any neoplasms, the webs of nerves, the small lit fonts in which my pathology or my future might be written.