The check-up

Then it is time to go back for a check-up - to determine if the operation was a success. They might have cut out your tongue, but metastasis could wreak even greater havoc. It is something you have thought about but were too occupied with the immediate to give it much attention. You cannot think about the admissibility of metastasis and re-educate your mouth at the same time. Nevertheless, the surgeon is thinking about it - that's why he sent you for radiotherapy. Metastasis would ruin his good work.

The magnetic resonator is endless - it lasts for more than an hour and you almost despair of ever getting out of the machine. It thumps away with its chill-out beat - in doses of three and five minutes. You count the seconds so that you know when the dosis will end and you can breath freely, move a muscle, any muscle, just any variant on lying there waiting for the next dosis to begin. You cannot move - if you move they tell you the dosis will have to be repeated, like being punished for doing something wrong. You grip a rubber ball attached to a tube. You are supposed to squeeze it in case of extreme distress - but you are not going to squeeze it. Not yet. It seems that after the last dosis you cannot tolerate any more. But you can - you know you can. And you will. It is intolerable - but you tolerate and you will tolerate until it comes to an end. And then it is over.

'Phenomenal', says the surgeon. It is not your head he is looking at on the monitor - he is looking at his job of work, he is admiring his technique and applauding his own skill. Or so you think because today you want to be difficult. You do not want anyone to tell you how correct things are - your jaw hurts, your mouth is full of saliva, it is snowing and cold and you have just struggled through it for more than an hour to get here - and you forget this man is a giant. 'Phenomenal,' he repeats. 'As clean a mouth as I have ever seen.'

You ought to be assured - and you are. But it is as if you expected as much - and to come all this way is a troublesome formality which this giant could have avoided. How difficult are you going to be today?

'Fine...,' you say.

'Go away,' says the surgeon. 'And don't come back for at least three months.'

'Merry Christmas,' you rasp with your mutilated mouth by way a parting greeting.

Three months - about Springtime. That will do just nicely, you think.