Scalded

An infant on a page, captured indelibly as a literal textbook example. His eyes are closed, his hand clenched in a miniature paroxysm of agony. His skin is peeling off every part of his body, shedding in waves as if the poor child had been placed at the center of an oven. It is just a picture to me, a representation of dry symptom and associated syndrome.

He has an infection of Staphylococcus Aureus, most likely acquired in birth, caused by a bacterial flora his mother carried harmlessly. It has colonized his skin, and is producing a myriad of toxins, most notably (in this case) the two variants of exfolatin, a toxin that does exactly what it sounds like. He is burning up and shedding skin, immortalized forever in print, a case study image of "Ritter's Syndrome," the scalded skin syndrome of infants. This bacteria is destroying him, ripping apart his body in an attempt to create a large pool of defenseless nutrients, an infectious strip mining.

He must have been in agony. New to the world, confused by every element, he was born into pain, and most likely expired the same way. He lives on, in a fashion, immortalized as an educational tool. I can't decide if it is important to remember his pain, to note it. You see so many pictures, so much agony and shame. Can I really feel for each one?

Agnoscosis

There is a disease to learning about disease. A creeping sickness of the mind, a pathological invasion of your connection to normality, health, wellness. It is unavoidable. They tell us in medical school, we will lose our empathy. With 100% infection rate, this disease creeps into you with every deconstructive factoid you memorize about how the living, breathing, working thing you call your body is actually just a massive cooperative machine running on the knife edge of failure.

The disease is spread by books. You carry these books with you. These books full of stories of pain and suffering. Demographics of disease, people like you, like your parents, and incidence statistics that add up to well over 100% (everyone has, or will get, something...). These books are full of pictures of things that are so obviously wrong. Pictures of organs, once functioning vital parts of a person, of a life, now sectioned, exposed, isolated diseased and alone. The heart, the lungs, expanded, lesioned, granulated, fibroid, decayed, enlarged, or necrotic. These things happen you learn. They happen to everyone. All the time. Every part of your body can, and will, go defunct, fail, and disintegrate.

I traveled this weekend. I flew to visit my girlfriend, to reconnect with my humanity, with the happy parts of life, the hubbub below the skin diminished in importance. But I carried my books with me, and I saw my disease reflected in the revulsion of the flight attendant and the woman sitting next to me. As I studied, as I intently focused on learning the precise etiology and cell patterns of usual interstitial pneumonia, these poor women avoided glancing at the pictures. The disincarnated lungs idly waiting on the page, blackened from coal, crystallized with silicon. Silicosis, Anthracosis, the dry names and concepts associated with death by dust of quartz or coal. I can identify them from their pictures now. But this exposure, a memetic equivalent of coal or quartz dust, flying through and calcifying the pathways of the mind, comes with its own risk. This disease of knowledge is shown in its disconnection, its clinical obsession, and its reduction of the human condition. This disease presents macroscopically in the eyes of others. In the eyes of my fellow passengers I saw disease. Agnoscosis, the sickness of knowing.