Seeing My Marriage in a Spinal Cord Tumor
George Such
1. Dr. Ha, incisive smile below his glasses, asks me if I’d like to watch him operate, a spinal cord tumor, he says, fingers touching as he talks. He leans against the doorway of the physical therapy room where I’ve been teaching manual care, me a chiropractor, a volunteer, my first time in Saigon. I’d love to, I tell him, Sign me up.
2. The scalpel seems a part of Dr. Ha’s hand. It glides like a jet across the skin, and leaves a red contrail over the spine. So much of what we are is fluid. Then they spread apart the skin and muscles with metal retractors and suction the leaking blood.
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