Some of you engage in Thursday Randomocity…
I like the potential that my Sunday Style post is showing, it gives me a target for which to aim in content and timing. I want to develop more such things for other days, as a means to keep up some content. Tonight at work, a pretty random memory hit me. usually, someone around me triggers them, but not this time. Now is as good a time as any to start it.
It would seem that I have strongly detailed memories. Some date back as far as three years of age. They don’t all sit around int he surface of my brain, but various thoughts and conversations unlock various chunks of my stored life. Although the events run the gambit of experience, when I rediscover them most often my reaction is that of curiosity about the memory: why it is so intense? What brought it about? So on. I am not usually inclined to still it is a matter of dwelling on the past, so much as remembrance of my life.
Here we go…
The time is: about mid-July, 2004. I was 37.
The place: St. Luke’s Hospital on the Plaza, KCMO. 5th floor BMT wing.
I was just finishing up my seven round of eight of chemotherapy. (For new arrivals, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, Burkitts type) The staff had not yet figured out what was causing my fevers at the end of every other round. The last bag of agent emptied into my central line. Twenty minutes later, I was building a fever that would peak at one-hundred and six point five. I remember the nurse pulling out the thermometer from my mouth. I was astounding. A few times as a child I hit one oh three. One oh six point five…
This was the day I was suppose to go home to recover for the last round of chemo. I stayed two and a half days extra for observation. They brought in a chiller blanket that first afternoon. (Think of an air-conditioned sheet of bubble-wrap.) They rolled me to my side, like they would to change the linens for someone that was bed-ridden. I was incredibly cold on that thing. Whichever side laid against it was entirely numb. I don’t think I switched sides too often… Afterward, I had terrible folliculitis down the left side of my body.
I remember the flurry of activity in my room. Doctors and nurses and orderlies and other staff members. As well as my mother. I remember it very clearly. I remember the conversations flying about the room. The tone of concern about every line of words. I recall being moved about and my stats being taken regularly. The smell of of the Heparin used to keep the central line open… I remember all of the fuss.
Only, I saw none of it. Not one bit.
I think this is why I remember it so clearly, so vividly.
Such an odd experience. It happened with me one other time back in eight grade, but I will save those details for a future post in the series.
How odd is it to remember a day so intensely in hearing and taste and touch, but have no visual record of it. I assume that the heat of the fever and swelling of various brain-stuff pushes against the optical nerve blocking its information. Or something to that effect. When still in college, I spent a chunk of time inspecting my memory process… I had such an awful way at putting single events to dates. I mean, key events had time-line anchors and I knew where everything else fit between those, but specifics of when on the bulk of them didn’t exist in my head. I also noted that memories associated with peak emotional states were more intense: they had more detail, more depth. Almost like my emotional levels played as a recorder for the experience… The higher the peak, the more tracks that got recorded. Didn’t really matter which emotion, just as long as it was strong: my middle sister’s wedding, both of my grandmothers’ memorials, my parents’ twenty-fifth anniversary, on and on.
Sometimes, a matching emotional state can unlock related memories, but I don’t think it is necessary.
If I go looking for a memory, it doesn’t always unlock so completely. When I fall into them, I can experience it like it was just yesterday, or even as if it were currently happening. Some more recent stuff may be still charged emotionally, but other wise my current self stays unattached, almost like watching a movie. Well, a movie in Smell-O-Vision…
There you have it, the Inaugural Installation of Randomemory.
Next week: I will aim for actual Thursday…
gryphon's hole 