My dentist has a new-fangled X-ray machine that takes panoramic pictures of your mouth. For the pleasure of this new procedure, you stand up, place your chin down on a bar, bite down on a plastic something, hold your head still (with the help of some kind of light head brace) and stand there wondering just how much radiation is about to come your way.
Enough that you have to take off your metal (earrings, glasses, necklace). Enough to make the technician scurry away behind a metal door. You hear a beep, a little hum, and the mechanic camera arm does a 360°sweep around your head.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spied the computer screen. For the briefest moment, I saw my skull. My head looked like a skeleton. The only thing about it that looked different than NCIS skeletons exhumed from the ground was my left rear crown. But there I was. No skin, no hair (not that it was a good hair day, but still). Nothing I tend to think of that’s me. My cascading thoughts went something like this:
“Eeeeeeeeewwwwwwwww – that’s my head.”
“I guess the bright spot is my crown.”
“Have I ever seen my skull before?”
“Is that really what I look like?”
“My skull looks so skinny.”
“I look way better with hair.”
“E eeeeeeeewwwwwwwww.”
I’m not the kind of person who likes to look at skeletons. I chose against medical school so I never had to meet a cadaver. My son had a hanging skeleton in his 4th grade classroom. The teacher named him “Butch,” and put a blond wig on him for Halloween. For the full 180 days of school, my son sat with 28 live beings and one dead one. I think he’s a little less ooked out by skeletons now than I am. But I’m not sure. I’m a bit too ooked out to have a conversation with him about the skeleton at the core of our bodies.
I tend to think I’m way more important than a generic set of bones. All skulls look alike, it turns out. It was a bit of a narcissistic injury. I wasn’t expecting to see my skeleton. I was just going to get my teeth cleaned. But I guess you never know when the universe has an alternate plan in store for you.
I left the office, teeth polished and smooth, filled with the knowledge that nothing untoward showed up on the panoramic view. Cancer free, my mouth is. Of course, I never imagined the possibility of cancer in my mouth until I was standing perfectly still for the screening.
I looked so thin, so in need of nourishment, I succumbed to a primal pull to put some meat on my bones, and ate my lunch early.
yes, that panorama view is scary! kathy