Eating the Underworld by Doris Brett Page A

…
    At this point in my re-introduction to reality, the dietician arrives. Here, the peel-me-a-grape part of the fantasy dissolves. The menu she is offering looks quite respectable, but I discover I am not at all hungry. All I feel like having is vegemite on toast. And that is all I will feel like having for my entire hospital stay. Not having thought about vegemite for twenty years, I am startled by this new love affair. But, like all the best love affairs, it is irresistible and over the next few weeks, I work my way steadily through numerous jars of the stuff.
    All this, however—the pain, the discomforts, the nurses—are nothing, because what I am feeling above all else is happy. Incredibly, marvellously, ecstatically happy. I have won the lottery, I am going to live! I feel luckier than I’ve ever felt in my life.
    I’ve never thought of luck as playing a particularly auspicious role in my life. This last decade particularly has been dogged by bad luck. I’m used to getting my head down and working to undo it. It feels almost overwhelming to be handed this, the biggest piece of luck in my life, on a plate. Although I am notparticularly religious, the word that keeps coming to mind is blessed . I feel blessed. By who or by what, I don’t know, but the feeling pervades me.

 
    Waking Up
    Does the caterpillar know
    what’s happening to it?
    Waking one morning
    feeling strange, an ache,
    for instance, a head
    like stone, the need
    to slow down, wind up
    into that oval sleep
    greater than darkness
    greater than the whole
    of dreams where you can
    hide and never be found.
    Is it love that breaks
    the brown carapace?
    Or is it something harder—
    the surgeon with his glistening
    knife, the anaesthetist
    with tubes. And how it must
    feelat first, waking to the news
    of loss. The city in ruins
    around you, brown
    shell and ash. The old
    body gone. The new one soft
    and unusable. Waking to the hot
    brute face of sunlight, hard
    as the arcs of operating
    tables. The thin
    cracking struggle,
    the unseen filaments starting
    to unfold, to name their colours.
    The crazing terror—your
    legs gone, your skin gone—
    and all the while
    unknown, behind you,
    rising, rising in the slow air
    are the strange markings of angels.

 
    Intravenous Drip
    The thin man is always beside me.
    He was there when I woke,
    holding my wrist like a genteel
    hospital visitor.
    He feeds me
    nutrients, water, morphine.
    Drop by drop, the most
    devoted mother.
    He performs magic too,
    thanks to him the flowers
    have started to beat like hearts
    in their baskets.
    and when the nurses come in,
    I smile at them gauzily.
    He is deeply attached.
    And it shows.
    He would follow me anywhere,
    even to Fairbanks, Alaska.
    I am his life, he exists
    only to serve me. He says
    this over and over
    the way the wolf speaks
    to the moon’s rising.
    Sometimes at night I see
    that if I just lie still,
    I will be fed forever.

 
    G REG COMES BY ON HIS daily visit the first day after surgery. He tells me what he has found—early-stage ovarian cancer, confined to one ovary. No sign that he could see of any spread. Martin has already told me this, but I like hearing Greg repeat it. I like hearing anyone repeat it.
    Greg has taken samples of the fluid in my abdomen, as well as tissue samples from various neighbouring organs. All of these are currently being examined by Pathology. If they show microscopic traces of tumour cells, Greg tells me, I could suddenly find myself classified as having late-stage, instead of early, ovarian cancer. This sobers me briefly, but only for a minute. I’m betting on my luck this time.
    After Greg’s visit, my nurse arrives. To my horror, I discover that I am supposed to get up and attempt to walk. Sitting up in bed is excruciating. Attempting to swing my legs over the edge of the bed is worse. Hanging on to the nurse, I manage to put one foot in front of the other and execute a few