Two months ago, I was training for a road race. Today, I’m fixated on three strikingly sharp pictures of the bones in my left leg, trying to find the anterior tibial cortex, wondering what size it should be. Mine is enlarged, apparently, and my doctor suspects a stress fracture, which is pretty much what the hard, dull pain in the center of my shin has been telling me this whole time.
“I’m going to walk around a little,” Nick told me when he called after his lunch with Olivier. “My legs feel a little stiff.”
Is he trying to rub it in? I’m practically on bed-rest pending next week’s MRI, after which I’ll most likely be restricted to minimal activity for another twelve weeks. At the very least, in fact, since I have two psychotic dogs and the need to keep our household running, not to mention the fact that I make a godawful patient, and “minimal activity” for me isn’t exactly the ideal that my orthopedist may have in mind.
Anyway.
I’ve gotten two X-rays in my life before moving here, if you don’t count the dental kind, which are lame. In both cases I was told that I was fine and sent home, but I was a minor, so I don’t know: in the U.S., do they give you your film? They do here, and it’s incredible.
Nearly three years ago I had a chest X-ray to prove that I didn’t have tuberculosis, although for the amount of time I’d already been here and potentially infectious it was a little silly. The doctor called me into what looked like an unused classroom and showed me my ribs, my lungs, the delicate outline of skin that showed where I ended and began. She asked me all of these questions about my lifestyle, like we were just chatting since I wasn’t toxically tubercular, and I kept staring. It’s still rolled up in a corner somewhere; what I look like as a ghost.
Now I have three pictures of my leg, and I can’t for the life of me see what’s wrong. There are lines, striations, shadows, flaws…it’s all mystery, and all mine.