Ultraviolet light irradiates my blood during 10 Mondays. My hair grows back to a reasonable length. The hallway smells like a hallway and medical carpeting. Similar feelings arise each time I step through the entryway — it’s like I can’t move forward, but I’m moving forward. In the building next door, someone is spitting their teeth one-by-one onto a plate in undefined silence. We’re spilling paint inside and opening our eyes. Does your dentist tell you to hum? The nurse knows I’m high so she gives me my own room and turns the lights off after hooking me up to the IV. I can’t stop laughing. After the hour and half-long irradiation, I see my doctor and record the whole session on a cellphone voice memo. I never listen to it. Do you know the feeling when you’re just falling asleep or waking up and you can’t comprehend language? How familiar is the state of not-knowing.
That night when I get home, I dream I am submerged in the ocean after some time working on a boat with women wearing yellow shorts. In the dream, my job is art director for a video they’re shooting. I take a break to fold myself into a tiny box when I think no one is noticing. It is a great joy until I realize there’s a trap door at the bottom of the box — I find myself at sea and I can barely breathe. Tremendous grey clouds cloak my surroundings. I keep swimming and eventually, I wash up on the shore of my hometown, my chest burning. I don’t want to get out of the water because it is warm. I wake up instead.
During the next Monday, I notice wire mobiles attached to light fixtures, as if they had grown from them. The wood chips from outside come inside. I did not eat papaya yet but someone calls me to tell me it’s not too late, the grocery store is still open. I do not see my doctor because neither of us has any updates. I am there just for the ultraviolet light, and the nurses are just there for the blood.
I have a playlist for these Mondays, but I can’t access it because today is a Thursday. I can only talk about the first song on the playlist which is called Skinny Ghost by Happy Trendy.
On a Monday that feels more like a Sunday, I am having a dissociative episode in the car. I magically arrive at the door to the office and the mobiles are tilted in an unsettling way. The fluorescent lights aren’t on. I can’t see anything, but I know the way. Thank God I’ve been here before. Yeah. Thank God. I knock on the door instead of barging in. The nurses recognize me even more than before, but they recognize the others too. There are too many people here today, come back next week to get your blood treated. Ok, thanks, bye. Goodbye. Wait. Wait! Wait? Have you gotten your vitamins yet? No… OK COME HERE!!!!!!!
I don’t move because I am already there. The nurse administers a shot into my belly and it hurts. I get sick from the vitamin shot for the rest of the week.
I barge into my next Monday. I am 20 minutes early and the office is empty. The rest goes exactly how I expect it should, except I forgot my headphones so I have to listen to the whirring of the machine. The tubes transporting light are longer than my body. I sleep when I’m home.
Sometimes I wake up thinking the count has been reset, and I have more Mondays filled with irradiation appointments than I actually do. I can’t tell if it is a wish or a fear, but I feel better now, I think. I see my doctor before my next blood treatment instead of afterward. He intimidates me because his skin is cold and tight, when he smiles it is huge but lasts barely a second. I want to crawl inside his throat to hear his words before they exit his mouth because they affect me too much on contact with the outside air. Do you still get that moving or spinning sensation? He asks me. Yes, almost always, I reply. Do you have it right now? Yes, but not too bad today. Did you get your vitamins? Yes, they were horrible. Horrible, that’s interesting…people usually love them! Ok, Ok, ok, ok can I drink orange juice now? No.
The ceiling comes down to the floor, and I know I’ve written this before. I just really want to say that I miss the light, the way it feels in my veins and how badly I have to pee when the treatment is over. Someone has to escort me into the hallway because I get so dizzy and they open up the restroom with a key attached to a doll’s head and I stare and I stare into the mirror until no one is there until I’m looking at absolutely nothing. All the doors are off their hinges I get back into the car I go home I have 1 Monday left.
(Note: part of this was supposed to be included in my undergraduate thesis but it turned out to be irrelevant, I’m just really into the affect/atmosphere of medical procedures and I want to include it everywhere. So this lives here now. The doctor this was written about prescribed me pills for malaria even though I didn’t have malaria and I’m also pretty sure he saved my life but I can’t prove it.)