💭 A few words
I saw it in the mirror today. It had been a while since I noticed. It’s mostly out of sight on Zoom calls or when I quickly glance in the mirror during my daily tasks. In fact, more often than not, I only think of it when mindlessly touching my throat and find a bump or an errant hair. The scar. Two inches across, about an inch below my jawline lives a scar from two surgeries that kept me alive.
In middle school, one of my classmates’ mother drove the bus that took me home every day. She was blonde and pretty and chatty, not your typical bus driver. I usually tried to sit up front so she would talk to me, because she loved to talk. I didn’t notice right away, but she too had a scar. Larger, darker than mine, across her throat, similarly situated. One day, she caught me staring at it in the long bus driver mirror.
“My scar? Yeah, I got that in college when I was raped at knifepoint.”
I gasped.
“Just kidding, that didn’t happen. I had a surgery in my twenties, during college,“ she laughed.
I thought about my own scar and wondered if I’d ever lie to someone to shock them about it. I still don’t understand why she thought that would be an appropriate joke to tell a 12 year-old.
The first time I had surgery, I was awake. Our family doctor caught the cyst, what my parents had thought was a zit initially, had become much larger. When it began to ooze from their five year old’s neck—I remember holding lots of warm hand towels to my throat while watching cartoons—our family doctor took a look. He removed it, using local anesthetic, during our office visit. My primary memory from that episode is looking up at my dad, my doctor, and Nurse Wendy and glancing again, realizing my dad had left. Except he hadn’t. He’d fainted seeing the inner-workings of his eldest daughter’s throat. The medicine Dr. Field gave me afterward made me sleepy and I immediately fell asleep on the couch when we got home.
But it wasn’t gone, only temporarily delayed. When the healing didn’t end, Dr. Field discovered that the cyst had returned and was nearly the size of a softball, threatening to cut off my windpipe, we had to make an appointment with a surgeon. I was the only 6 year-old who knew about aggressive thyroid cysts in my kindergarten class. My surgery had to be performed by a plastic surgeon, with my family doctor assisting. They put a scratch and sniff sticker in the shape of a cupcake on the inside of my oxygen mask. Someone told me to try to smell it, so I took deep breath after deep breath trying to find the sweetness in the air, only coming up with something like nail polish remover. And then I woke up.
No more cyst, only a scar. For the most part people don’t notice, I’m lucky. And now that I’m an adult it’s much smaller. Occasionally I get a small pimple on the scar and call my mom worried that the cyst is back again, but the pimples always heal and the scar remains.
✨ Recommended reading activity
I’ve been listening to a newer podcast from Saeed Jones, Zach Stafford, and Sam Sanders called Vibe Check, and really enjoying it—although that’s not my recommendation. At the end of each episode the hosts share their recommendations for keeping your vibe right, and in the last episode Saeed discussed the difficulties of winter. There are 2 parts to winter, he explained. The first part is the twinkly, sparkly celebratory half of the season where the weather changes and you (might) feel festive. The second part is when the holidays are over, and winter stretches out long before you into March. So, to combat the winter blues, Saeed recommended getting out in your community and doing festive things: tree lightings, holiday markets, etc. to make the most of the twinkly season and hopefully, push those blue feelings a little further out. I like that a lot.
🥂 Something random
Lately, between binging Parks and Recreation with my daughter, and Gilmore Girls while I do household chores, I’ve been watching Toast of London on BritBox. It stars Matt Berry, now famous for playing Lazlo on What We Do in The Shadows. His voice is so distinct that I could listen to it for hours.
YES! You made it to the end of the newsletter, congrats my friend. Until next time,
Jenn