ten, being the worst

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i haven’t written
because i am under the assumption that our life
with or without cancer
(but especially without)
is not all that interesting
(to you)

certainly not any more interesting than anyone else’s life
with or without cancer.

but when events with cancer do happen,
and yes, even in remission, they happen
all the time,
i will write.

————

i keep telling leanne to write down her patient stories,
though i’m the one who likes to write around here.

the other day she had a holocaust survivor come in.
i think it was shoulder pain
or back pain, or something like that.

and she probably asked him to describe the injury,
to take off his shirt (where she saw the tattoos
left over from the concentration camp),
to move his arm or his back
this way, and then that way,
and then like this.

and then she asked him the question
that she probably asks every patient:

“so, how would you rate your pain
from 1 to 10 with 10 being the worst
pain you can imagine?”

in my head he laughed.
(she said that weeks after, he came in again,
after a car accident, smiling, saying of the woman who hit him:
what do you do? she didn’t mean to).

and as he laughed,
leanne caught herself too.
the absurdity of the question
posed to him.

the quantity and intensity of pain
this man has endured over his lifetime…
and where does the twinge of a shoulder
fit in this equation?

how would she answer it
if and when someone posed it to her?

i’m sure she thought of that too.

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