Juxtapositions (I just love that word)

Shelley, at Retrospectacle, once again has captured my attention. Plague week continues, of course, but another post will not be denied attention–how often do you get the chance to watch an egg-sized cyst, full of tapeworm larvae, being removed from a 16-year-old girl’s brain?

Yeah, I know, cool!

Cool…because the girl lives, and makes a full recovery. Because she lives in this century, rather than in a century when people saw the plague as God’s wrath, treatable by prayer, bleeding, herbs, mercury, or lucky charms.

You can complain about modern health care all you like. I take a bit of a wider view. It has saved my life on more than one occasion, has saved my son… There are old cemetaries in this area that are practically littered with infant and child graves, many where the child had not lived long enough to be named. Follow the link. Watch this huge cyst being removed from this girl’s brain. Be grateful to medicine, science, education… you live in a very good time to be alive.

A golf-ball sized hydatid cyst
Is not the sort of thing I’d list
As one I’d like to try.
Indeed, I’d rather think it marvy
Not to host so many larvae–
I’m not that kind of guy.

In juxtaposing these two posts
Where humans serve unwilling hosts
To tapeworms or bacilli,
And treatment may be surgery
Or bleeding, charms, or mercury,
You make my spine go chilly.

I won’t say much, but I concede
That in the past, I’ve had the need
To seek a doctor’s care;
I’m fine, of course, but even so,
I think: It’s not that long ago
My “treatment” would be prayer.

This girl here in your video
(My daughter’s age, I’ll have you know)
Is lucky as can be–
To live in this, the present day
Where science, not the church, holds sway
I hope that you’ll agree.

For her, and for my daughter’s sake
I’d like to take this chance to make
A science-based reply;
For researchers, for doctors, nurses,
Not for priests, or prayer, or curses
The stakes are much too high.

Teratoma–or, Knit me a sister.

Shelley serves as my muse again today… The brain was not her first post about anatomically accurate knitting; there was a previous post on a cute and cuddly teratoma. Ok, so she calls it “complicated and grotesque”, but tomayto tomahto. But the knit teratoma is indeed cute and cuddly, if you ask me. So I thought I would try a slightly different spin on the whole idea of having had a twin who died and whose body, in the womb, was absorbed into yours in the form of a tumor with recognizable body parts.

I mean, that can’t be all bad, can it?

“Teratoma”, or “Knit me a Sister”.

“I have an invisible friend”, I said,
“But she doesn’t hide beneath my bed,
Or in my closet–no, instead,
I keep her tucked inside.”

“We do not mean to condescend,
But we all know, there’s no such friend;
This fabrication now must end.”
My Mom and Dad replied.

“But Mommy! Daddy! Please, I swear!
She’s closer than my teddy bear!
See my tummy? She’s in there!
I even feel her growing!”

My parents didn’t scream or shout;
They trusted me, despite their doubt,
And had a doctor check me out
When something started showing!

My friend was real! I hadn’t lied!
At first, my twin, but then she died.
The doctors cut me open wide
And shoveled out my basement.

I never knew I had a sister,
But once my friend was gone, I missed her;
So, knitting till she raised a blister
My Mom made a replacement!

By the way, the original source of the pictures also has a poem (or song) about it! And instructions!

Knit me a brain!


A tip of the cuttlecap to Shelley of Retrospectacle for reporting on the Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art

We’ve got sweaters to mend; we’ve got socks we can darn,
So pull up a chair, and I’ll spin you a yarn;
It’s a song with a Scarecrow-of-Oz-like refrain:
Please pick up your needles and knit me a brain!

I’ve knitted my bones, and I’ve knitted my brow,
But I’ve never seen brains knitted—up until now;
With each neural pathway a separate skein,
It’s Art and it’s Science, so knit me a brain!

Two hemispheres knit, and then reaching across ‘em
A beautiful, zippered-up corpus callosum;
Such fine application of knit, purl, and chain,
I want one myself—so please, knit me a brain!

With the brain’s convolutions appropriately gyred
This fabric creation has got me inspired!
My love for this art, I can hardly contain—
So how can I get one? Please knit me a brain!

Some people may tell you I’ve gone ‘round the bend
That the stuff ‘twixt my ears needs some decades to mend.
I could use some new grey-matter; mine’s gone insane,
It would not go to waste, if you’d knit me a brain.

You can see for yourself—why, just look at the time
I must take to obsessively put things to rhyme;
Something’s wrong, and I think that the answer is plain:
I need a replacement—so knit me a brain!