Chronicling the "Ouch": Capstone Artifacts

Patient Form (Back/Neck- PT)

From The Cancer Journals- Audre Lorde:

On the morning of the third day, the pain returned home bringing all of its kinfolk. Not that any single
one of them was overwhelming, but just that all in concert, or even in small repertory groups, they were excruciating.

There were constant ones and intermittent ones. There were short sharp and long dull and various combinations of the same ones. The muscles in my back and right shoulder began to screech as if they'd been pulled apart and now were coming back to life slowly and against their will.

My chest wall was beginning to ache and burn and stab by turns. My breast which was no longer there would hurt as if were being squeezed in a vise. That was perhaps the worst pain of all, because it would come with a full complement of horror that I was to be forever reminded of my loss by suffering in a part of me which was no longer there. I suddenly seemed to get weaker rather than stronger. The euphoria and numbing.

Effects of the anesthesia were beginning to subside

(37-38).

my body. Extended

a rusty butter knife 
cuts and digs
extracting my bones
from. my flesh

my powdered throat 
dust and sand 
i has been buried 
my body beneath my mind

my body. extended 
the wild remains
like trees aging
down and up and out

i would spear my teeth into my foot 
detach my foot-me from my rest-of-me
you seek to make me I 
give me voice 

when i die, the ants will feast
i falls away 
my body extended beyond
my body. extended