Backbone by Karen Duffy

Author:Karen Duffy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
Published: 2017-04-05T04:00:00+00:00

I don’t take my illness too seriously. It is a serious illness, but my coping strategy is to find humor in the humiliations. When I broke my foot for the third time in a year, I spray painted my cast metallic gold, propped myself up with a gold glitter-speckled cane, and went to the Golden Globes Awards as the wingman for a pal who was nominated. I also wore a flask bracelet filled with bourbon, which is an essential accessory for the sick and the well.

Sir John Wheeler-Bennet wrote that “circumstances determine our lives, but we shape our lives by what we make of our circumstances.” When sarcoidosis attacks another organ, I am challenged by yet another obstacle my unpredictable disease has placed between me and what I want to accomplish with my life. My doctor just told me that I need eye surgery—and surprise, this new problem has nothing to do with sarcoidosis. I was in disbelief and didn’t know how to respond. I took a few steps towards acceptance by going on eBay and buying a vintage lorgnette—the kind of opera glasses used by Margaret Dumont, the straight woman in the Marx Brothers movies. They’re on a stick you use to hold the lenses up to your eyes, rather than hooking over your ears. My new lorgnette has rhinestone-encrusted cat’s-eye frames, and they make me feel a little better about the scary new problem with my vision.

I live around the corner from a party store that has a huge selection of pranks and practical jokes, so I bought a pair of glasses with spring-loaded eyeballs that pop out. This morning I hid behind the newspaper and complained about the pain behind my eyes. When my husband came into the dining room to kiss me goodbye, I poked my head out from behind the paper with two googly eyes. I think he appreciated it. Later today I’m going to start embroidering an eye patch with a winking eye, so after my surgery I can adjust to monovision my way.

When I lost most of my hair from taking a chemotherapy drug, I didn’t go the tasteful route with artificial hair. My buddy Jon and I went shopping at a Greenwich Village drag queen supply store. We bought a matching pair of enormous Afro wigs, and Jon wore his in solidarity with me. We decided to go to the movies after wig shopping. I may have overcompensated in the hair department, as the usher asked us to move back a few rows because other theatergoers could not see over our wigs. I never wore a conventional hair replacement. All my wig choices were novelties, like a waist-length Cher wig I bought to wear to my best friend’s engagement party. This particular choice kept slipping off my head, so I kept it in place with tape and the chinstrap of a kid’s cone-shaped paper party hat.

WIG THIEVES

In eighteenth-century England, another thing to worry about besides cholera, smallpox, and rickets was getting your hair heisted by wig snatchers.

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