SKELETAL THINKING

Speaking of x-rays… did you ever think it weird how you’ve got a whole skeleton… living inside you? I said this to Sammy today and she laughed as though it was the daftest thing she’d heard.*

But when the doctor had shown me my toe and I could see the grey fleshy outline of my foot with these white bones inside, I was suddenly reminded that behind this skin and these (unremarkable) muscles, a spooky spectre of bones is basically holding me together.

My foot bones looked weird. At the tip of the so-called ‘distal phalanx’ a thin grey line curved horizontally across the toe.

“Not the most impressive break I’ve seen,” said the doctor cheerfully. It was at least clean.

“Still flippin’ hurts,” I said, with an uncommonly candid tone. He hinted at a chuckle, then went on to tell me about boots and antibiotics and how to walk on your heel. Doctors can be really matter-of-fact about things, I’ve found, especially when you almost make them laugh.

Anyway. There it was behind him - a ghostly foot of a skeleton, printed on grey, floating on black, just as Roentgen must have seen it when he first discovered x-rays. I wonder if he too was freaked out by the living skeleton that controlled his every movement? I mean - think about it - the dark holes for eyes, the sunken skull, the thin, brittle arms and femurs and tibias and ribs and pelvis and spine… all there, now, inside of you, stuffed with eyeballs and liver and heart and kidneys and things.

I shudder at the thought.

One of a much larger number of reasons of course why I am not a doctor.

*Trust me: that is a high bar.