...my proclivity for performing surgery on myself began when i was eleven years old...i'd contracted a plantar wart on the heel of my left foot, probably from walking around the yard without shoes, and because i didn't know it was a wart i thought i could simply scratch it away...i dug at the wart constantly, pulling at the disgusting mound of skin that seemed, the more i dug down, to get larger and larger...finally, i resorted to taking a safety pin, sterilizing the tip over the flame of our gas stove, and piercing the open sore...by then it was not exactly the size of a dime, but it was getting there, and until i used the needle it hadn't bled...
...that's what caused Grandma to notice it, the blood...i left little stamps all over the carpet...at first she blamed her dog, an ancient sheltie who, the year before, had bitten into her own stomach because, the vet told us, she thought she should have been pregnant...but when a thorough inspection of the dog turned up no evidence of a bleeding wound, i was next for the magnifying glass...i held up my left leg, balancing on the kitchen counter, and showed Grandma the blood-crusted crater in my heel...a few days later my mother took me to the doctor and i was given a vial of caustic-smelling liquid...i was to drop a little of it into the hole in my foot each day...it turned the blood black and when it dried it flaked into what looked like little seeds that deposited themselves on my white socks...after a few weeks of more digging and medicine, the wart left me with a small pock mark and the desire to dig into my skin with a sterilized safety pin...
...but i didn't become a cutter, or a person obsessed with piercings...instead, whenever i--or anyone i knew--had a splinter or hangnail, i grabbed the nearest safety pin and offered up my services...
...a few months ago, i began to have nearly dibilitating pain in my jaw coupled with what felt like the end of a toothpick poking into the very back of my tongue...what i thought was a toothache was actually necratic bone...according to my dentist, when i had my wisdom teeth removed (yes, i went to a surgeon for this, i didn't do it myself) a part of the root was left behind...for some reason, these fifteen years later, that part of bone wanted out of my system...but instead of dissolving into my body like that unwanted twin in the womb, my jaw bone was now making its way through my gum and out of my body..."You're the third person I've seen this week with this problem," he told me. "That's a tip of the bone you're feeling with your tongue. I'm going to give you a prescription for a painkiller and mouthwash for the open sore, but you'll probably be able to break it off with your thumb nail."
"Really?" I said.
...he nodded...it was the first time i'd ever been encouraged to perform surgery on myself...