This is My Vanity — Shot!
What my scars try to teach me.
I have a three-inch scar below my left ear. It traces my neck like a reclining question mark and curls up under my chin. I earned it during a surgery three years ago to remove a cancerous tumor from my jaw.
Lower on my neck, like the question mark’s lost point, there’s a scar from a tracheotomy that allowed me breath for ten days following surgery.
The largest scar is on my left leg — stretching mid-shin to ankle — a wide pocket where surgeons extracted fibula bone, tissue and blood vessels to graft my replacement jaw.
What are the lessons my scars try to teach me?
This is my Vanity — Shot!
On account of my vanity, I avoided photos during treatment. I only have one shot of misshapen misery a few weeks after surgery, before the scars got inflamed by radiation.
When this photo was taken, I had dropped twenty pounds and lost my sense of humor. At the time I believed this was my peak-misery moment. But over the next few months, I proceeded to lose more weight, my sense of taste, the ability to swallow and the power of…
