MAINLINING poem about gallium count in a cancer poem sequence

MAINLINING poem about gallium count in a cancer poem sequence written before neurosurgery, during chemotherapy, radiation therapy and after achieving remission.

This poem called MAINLINING is one of the poems in the cancer poems section of the Genghis Lotus Poetry Collection which is hosted at two locations, genghislotus.com and zenvirus.com/genghislotus/.

This poem is by Hugh Cook, author of the medical memoir Cancer Patient, the full text of which is available to read for free online.

Click to read Cancer Patient

MAINLINING

This is the place where time escapes from pressure.
Hours are soft slippers.
There is no stress whatsoever.
The woman who hits me up
Is good at this, and knows it.
The needle slides in nice,
Without a whimper.
It's painless.
"Itakunai?" she says.
It doesn't hurt?
"Itakunai," I say,
Watching, with interest,
The big glass syringe,
The professional needle.
The solid gray shoots home.
Mainlining gallium,
Becoming
An intimate client of the nuclear industry,
I am, I think, at peace.
In the absolute calm of the nuclear medicine department
I feel completely at ease.
But, on exiting,
I find my geographies dislocated.
The corridors
Stumble into mazes.
My fractured map
Is gaptoothed with abysms.
I blunder as best I can,
This way, that way,
Must be a way out of here somewhere —
Trucking through the basement levels,
Looking for my life.

This poem is a souvenir of the day on which I became radioactive, taking a fractional dose of Chernobyl to set me up for a gallium count, an interesting procedure in which the radioactivity which has been injected into your body is used to take a series of photographs.

A blow-by-blow account of my gallium count procedure can be found in the online medical memoir Cancer Patient.

Click to read related chapter
Chapter Eleven

Summary of Chapter Eleven
of Cancer Patient:
The author hits a language problem while undergoing a CT scan in Japan. The scan finds an ominous lymph node near the aorta. The author has to undergo a second CT scan, this time with iodine injected intravenously to provide contrast. The upside of the iodine injection is that it supplies extra clarity. The downside is that it has a number of potential side effects, one of which is death. Surprisingly, the informed consent procedure skips over the death bit. On account of another procedure, a gallium count, the author becomes radioactive for a few days, but does not glow in the dark. Click here to read this chapter

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