Scars

The magazine “The Christian Century” has an interesting little writing competition. At regular intervals the magazine selects a single word. It asks writers to submit an article of less than 1000 words on that topic. This month the topic was simply PLATE. The next topic is SCAR. I decided that my reflections on that topic did not merit space in the magazine, but I did want to write on that topic and post it as a BLOG. So here it is.

I have what I will call a scar in my body which I think is unique. I was actually unaware that it was in my body until I was in college. There I played football. I fell and broke my ankle. When the Dr. looked at the x-ray. He immediately saw the fracture. However, there was another scar that interested him more. He asked me “Do you know that you have a pin embedded in the flesh of your ankle?” I did not. He explained that the x-ray clearly showed a full-length pin 

firmly embedded there. “It is not a needle,” he said. “There is no eye. It is a metal little pin about 2 inches long. It seems so firmly in place that I think we will just let it stay right there.”

I have no idea just when I stepped on that pin as it could have been at almost any time in my life. I went barefoot at least 10 months of every year. My feet and toes were often filled with stickers, or were punctured by nails, step edges or cactus. etc. I do not recall ever unsuccessfully asking Mother to try to remove something sticking in my foot. When I told Mother about this, she was concerned that the pin might move. She even imagined it moving all the way to a vital organ and causing mortal danger. I never worried about that.

It was about 10 years later. I played some basketball with my Chinese students in Hong Kong and injured my ankle. When I had it x-rayed once again the Dr. was not so concerned about the bad sprain, but he did excitedly point to a little 2-inch long mark on the x-ray. “That is a pin!” he exclaimed, “Looks like it has been there a long time.”

And since I tend to do things in threes, I repeated this experience one more time. So now I assume that pin still happily resides there after some 80 years. It is an invisible scar until it shows up on x-rays and I am happy to just let it rest in peace.

There is a second much more obvious scar. It is on my right side of my abdomen just below the waist. It is a reminder of when I had appendicitis at about age 7. That scar experience very nearly cost me my life. I had a punctured appendix. The puss and other materials completely swamped the whole area. This was before penicillin. The doctors were surprised that I survived. I just remember three things about that ordeal of almost 90 years ago. My dad and Uncle Reinhold Leschber took me to King’s Daughters Hospital in Temple. Mother really wanted to be with me, but she had to stay home with the 4 other little ones, including an infant. The ether was terrible. A small nurse told me she would wait for me to grow up and would then marry me and I believed her. And my mother told me that after that experience I became a slow runner. “You used to be the fastest boy of your age”, she said. “Now you are among the slowest.” I don’t need to look at that scar these mornings to be reminded that I have indeed slowed down a lot.

When I looked for it this morning, I found that my third scar has actually disappeared. It was right there above my right eye near my hairline for decades. I was maybe 10 when I needed to cut a string. I went to the kitchen, got the big ten-inch knife, pointed it upward through the string and pulled hard. The knife was sharp. It went right through that string, all the way up to my forehead just above my right eye. The gash was substantial. The blood flowed freely. Embarrassed and scared I ran and showed it to my mom. My Aunt Maddie happened to be visiting. She joined the Mother in the decision “Let’s not bother Dr. Weidemeier. We will just patch it up. Put some monkey blood (mercurochrome) on it and it will heal.” It healed. The scar remained for decades.

I write this BLOG on May 13 the day my Mother would have turned 118. She would remember all of this and then sum it all up with “God always took care of you, Melvin, and you needed that!”