Saturday 4 October 2008

Fractured jaw

I imagine an injury as being a single parent. In this case, my lower jaw is fractured--it no longer "fits" with the upper jaw. Like a little baby, it's always on my mind, always worrying, a little foreign something on the side of my head, me and not me at the same time. The little gnawing and cracking sounds wake me up in the middle of the night. Always so gentle and petitioning to it. It has changed my life: I no longer go out as I once did, feeling stigmatized.

As part of my bedroom activities, I imagine how far in the past an injury like this would equal death? In five days they're going to put a titanium rod in my jaw, to secure it back in place. X-rays and MRI and serious facial surgery. Could they do that 60 years ago, 80, 110? I think around 110, I'd probably be near the end. I'd probably have been a farmer, and I would have let it heal together on its own in a mismatched unalignment, having my farm wife stoically mash potatoes and cabbage into a paste that would be poured through a tin funnel into my mouth.

At some point, the inability to chew and communicate would have equaled death. Thus, I am all to more apparently wedded to civilization, all the more dependent on murderous dams, vicious pit mining, and omnipresent effluent. If I had my dream and industrial civilization did overshoot and crash, I wouldn't have the blender, the plastic straws, MRI's and titanium alloy to make it all better.

Its apparently routine surgery. My face is a bit swollen, but otherwise the same. They say I'll be back home after the surgery, I'll be alright. I plan on going to school monday. I earned this little bundle of joy by trying to stop a fight. I didn't and got hit, hard. The fuckers ran away. Didn't really hurt at the time, just odd.

Hopefully I post the x-rays soon.

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