Noun
1: mark remaining (as on the skin) after injured tissue has healed
Asymmetric surgical cuts secured by metal staples mark the access taken by my surgeon when installing cobalt chrome alloy inserts to replace worn ends of my thigh and shin bones. A tourniquet stopped blood flow to my lower leg during each surgery while my leg was contorted to glue inserts over my femur and tibia. After working in the cold operating room, my surgeon’s short-sleeved scrubs were sweaty when he greeted me in the recovery room less than an hour after he initialed my leg before the surgery. Several hours later, with the nerve block still intact, I took my first steps. Ten days later, the staples were removed. Beneath the scar was a brand-new knee.
2: a mark left where something was previously attached; cicatrix
Without pigment or teeth, my fleshy abdominal zipper bears witness to the organs and functions stripped of my teenaged body to control a stomach infection. Surgical vagotomy sliced my vagus nerve to reduce the rate of gastric acid secretion and pyloroplasty streamlined my gastrointestinal plumbing by removing a third of my stomach. Five decades later, doctors realize that gut bacteria benefit our mood and anxiety symptoms. With severed communication along my gut-brain axis, I don’t feel pain until I need to sleep.
3: A steep rocky eminence: a bare place on the side of a mountain.
At 9,127 feet, the summit of Mt. Shuksan is a three-sided rock pyramid standing 500 to 1200 feet above four encircling glaciers. On the back of my right hand between my thumb and forefinger is a scar inflicted by the adze end of my ice ax when I attempted to self-arrest (stop my sliding with by digging my ax into the icy surface) after falling. I had been kick stepping myself up a steep snow-filled gully, trying to keep my friends in sight. We were carrying full backpacks with sleeping bags, tents, and glacier climbing gear, but hadn’t reached the glaciers yet so weren’t roped together. While my self-arrest slowed my free fall, the blade of my ice ax must have hit a buried rock. The adze gashed my hand as I lost grip of the ax. The impact tipped me over onto my back where my pack cushioned my slide, scattering gear that had been stashed outside the pack along the gully snow like breadcrumbs for my climbing buddies, some of whom must have witnessed my accelerated descent.
I stopped near the end of the gully, out of sight and sound of my fellow climbers. It took a long time from them to reach me. We hiked out to cars and drove back to Seattle. By the time I arrived at the hospital, the risk of infection in my wound was too high for the doctors to repair my severed tendon. I was given a 10-day course of antibiotics and told to wash the cut with hydrogen peroxide to prevent it from scabbing.
Two weeks later, surgeons retrieved the proximal end of my severed tendon and reattached to the portion in my hand. A plaster cast was applied with my hand flexed backwards to minimize tension on the tendon. This cast proved handy for pounding in tent stakes.
Transitive verb: to mark with a scar
Like gravestones, scars are the remnants of scabs, the crusts of hardened blood of old wounds inflicted upon our bodies by boughs, rocks, and scalpels. My parents’ silence about their incarceration during World War II and assimilation in Detroit after leaving relocation camp ensured that I would appear whiter than them. My scars are lighter than my skin.
Susan Sugai's work appears in Superstition Review, Boulevard, and Sweet Lit.