Comments on: Cicatrix

By: Julie Stahlhut

Julie Stahlhut — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 01:30:33 +0000

I have scars from eight surgeries — and not one of them shows. Even if I were completely naked in public, no one would see them. You can see the scar from the scraped knee I got just before starting seventh grade, and the one I got on my chin at age 19 when I slipped while running down the dorm hall after downing one too many glasses of wine. But the ones from the tonsillectomy at age five and a half — the surgery that I wasn’t warned about until I was literally on the table, crying out loud with fear — don’t show. Neither do the ones from the cancer scare at age 40 (fortunately a false alarm) and from the later, completely successful repairs of two separate chronic pain conditions aren’t readily visible.

I’m pretty healthy now and I can’t complain about the care I’ve received. But there’s not a day that goes by in which I don’t remember at least one of those experiences, and — even though everything has worked out fine so far — fear the next one.

By: Greg P

Greg P — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 00:24:37 +0000

There are some scars that are like emblems of aging, the joint replacement scars, the midline sternal scar, and it seems that when they happen in sufficient numbers, they become less embarrassing to the owners, since they don’t hide them, and even use them as guideposts to their lives, “yeah, that was my first CABG in 1997, then I had one again in 2003, and my left hip in 1998, the right hip in 1999, and now they want to do my right knee.”

By: Chrysalis

Chrysalis — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 09:49:45 +0000

I’ll never forget your writings about scars. I hate mine, but there is nothing I can do about them. They are a badge of all I’d faced. A brand from walking through the fire, so to speak. I’m glad you’re back writing, Dr. Charles. You were missed.

By: Matt M

Matt M — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:00:28 +0000

Sid Schwab in his Surgeonsblog had something touching to say about history in a person’s scars, I believe.

By: robin andrea

robin andrea — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:53:24 +0000

I was staring at a friend’s scar the other day, the one she received after she thought she had stopped her scooter but hadn’t, put her feet down to the street to steady herself, and was flung to the pavement on her left knee and kept going. It’s a foot-long scar bisecting the knee north to south. A perfect line that cleaves the past from the present. It’s been five years since she had that accident. All the pain and rehab is behind her, but that scar is an ongoing testimony spoken in a common language understood everywhere.

By: WWWebb

WWWebb — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 10:55:13 +0000

For the sake of clarification, I wrote that comment *before* reading Mr. Jennings’ article.

By: WWWebb

WWWebb — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 10:41:15 +0000

Thank you for the etymology lesson regarding eschar/scars. I should have made the connection between the two years ago.

This metaphor, with the furnace connotations of eschar (which I *did* not know), brings with it all the metaphors of annealing and tempering, doesn’t it?

After all, if we have scars, then it means that we have been tested in the crucible and survived- bringing to mind Nietzsche’s maxim regarding that which does not kill us making us stronger.