Line of Demarcation
By Liza Bernstein
Early
one morning
in January
a surgeon
I had just met
the day before
removed a
lump
one centimeter in diameter
from the upper right quadrant
of my right breast
and having sent it
to the labs for
scrutiny, a
frozen section—
it came back positive, which, of course, isn’t—
he went back in
inside
he went back in
inside
the same incision
and
delicately
yet, lethal and
deliberate
he went back in
and
scraped out
nineteen
or was it twenty
lymph nodes
from underneath my arm.
one morning
in January
a surgeon
I had just met
the day before
removed a
lump
one centimeter in diameter
from the upper right quadrant
of my right breast
and having sent it
to the labs for
scrutiny, a
frozen section—
it came back positive, which, of course, isn’t—
he went back in
inside
he went back in
inside
the same incision
and
delicately
yet, lethal and
deliberate
he went back in
and
scraped out
nineteen
or was it twenty
lymph nodes
from underneath my arm.
That was
eight years
ago
eight years
and six months
to be exact,
and while
the single incision
the ruler-straight line of demarcation
he carved
on
in
through
my flesh,
while in its faintness
its elegant shadow of its bleeding swollen former
self
while that line
now a mere brushstroke
elicits, still, the reverent awe
of aesthetes for fine art in rarefied air
from doctors who thought
they’d seen it all before,
the skin underneath my arm
is still
numb
to the touch
today.
At age 10 or 11, in 1970s South Africa, Liza Bernstein reflected on the wrongs of apartheid and wrote her first poem, “The Waterhole.” It was published in her school’s magazine, but that was eons ago and her copy has vanished, likely due to the fact that she is a Third Culture Kid who moved between and lived in three countries: South Africa, France, and the US. A further troika of non-linearity was ensured by her three diagnoses of cancer, the first of which occurred when she was 29. Constants in Liza’s life include her multidisciplinary artistic expression, patient advocacy, and curiosity. A founding Stanford Medicine X ePatient Scholar, Liza is Diplômée de Sciences Po Paris; her USC Annenberg School for Communication MA is pending. Her extensive creative training includes ceramic sculpture, Capoeira Angola, theater/improv, and writing. Liza’s essay “On Cancer and Identity” was published in Cancer Today