I currently have stitches in my tongue, due to a minor procedure to remove a fibroma from biting the side of my tongue/scar tissue forming (I think of all of the times I’ve bitten my tongue without this happening…and then I think about how counterintuitive it is that cutting my tongue intentionally would not just create more scar tissue–I guess it’s like resetting a broken bone so that it’s done right). The stitches are the dissolvable kind (I’m not totally clear on whether they’re even still in there–there’s a lot going on in that sector of my tongue at present), though I don’t know if they actually *dissolve* or just fall out.
Thinking about my stitches (which are, by the way, the third–I think–time I’ve had stitches; the first two were 1) When I needed one stitch after being grazed with the c-section knife during birth; 2) When I needed two stitches after cutting my philtrum just above my upper lip on the bottom of a swimming pool (don’t ask; it was the great shame of my eleven years and frankly my greatest shame for a while longer); now I have three stitches in my tongue, or I did at one point) makes me think about the other medical devices that live, impermanently or permanently, in people’s bodies. A stent in the heart. A metal rod in the leg. The silver retainer backing my bottom teeth. Ashes to ashes.
My friend has a piece of toothpick petrified in her arm. When we were seven or eight, the two of us and another friend were being babysat while our three sets of parents were out to dinner. (This babysitter, who was my mom’s preschool student and whose mom was my preschool teacher, introduced me to Metallica and Nintendo–and not that my parents ever blamed him for what happened, but even if they had, he already had tremendous goodwill built up from Enter Sandman and Kid Icarus.) Our other friend was showing us something with a bunch of toothpicks–I don’t know, one of those kid party tricks like “How do you make nine out of ten?” but when we couldn’t figure it out, my other friend got bored and started sticking the toothpicks upright in the carpet like little stalagmites. When we heard the door signaling that our parents were back, she jumped up to go greet them, tripped, and landed on one of the toothpicks.
I remember a lot of screeching that night back at her house when her mom tried to remove it with scissors. She got half of it. The doctor said the other half would dissolve and be reabsorbed (what’s this RE? The toothpick wasn’t part of her body initially) by her body. Nope! It’s still in there, and if you catch it at the right moment, it stands at attention, a little landmark on her forearm.
