and fly wings, so I was never sure whether eternity was a good thing or not.
Leprosy, Leonardo and Father Damien
I knew these facts off by heart: Father Damien arrived in the leperâs colony of Kalaupapa in 1873, later he himself contracted leprosy and he died in 1889. I knew that leprosy often begins as a small dot in the palm of oneâs hand. You shouldnât call it leprosy, Mr Chapman said, it was really Hansenâs Disease and the fact that it was still called leprosy in our textbooks went to show you how behind Queensland was in the education system.
I had a small red dot on my palm. I couldnât remember it being there when we lived in Nurralloo. It wasnât a freckle or a mole, it was a definite dot. It looked a little as though someone had jabbed with a red ballpoint pen or the sharp end of a compass, not hard enough for blood to bead on the surface, just hard enough for it to leak under my skin and form a pin prick red dot.
At night I would wake screaming from dreams in which my fingers or my nose slowly crumbled. I wouldnât even know it was happening and then in the dream Iâd look down, casually, see myself in a mirror, and Iâd realise in horror why the people in the street or the supermarket had backed away from me. Dad would come in when I screamed and hold me and rock me. He always asked what I had dreamt about but I never told him. It wasnât fair to tell him about the leprosy dreams when his lungs were covered with real hot spots, cancerous cells that might be still multiplying themselves.
I hated the chapter on Father Damien but I couldnât stop reading it, over and over again. Leprosy starts with a tingling and then a numbness in the extremities, often the digits. Your fingers begin to rot. The book said that when Father Damien took confession, sometimes he had to hold his nose for the stench of rotting flesh. At first he slept out in the open, rather than share a hut with a leper, and he ate his food from a flat rock. I couldnât understand how he could bear to eat. Fingers and toes fall off, noses crumble back into the face of the victim, and eventually, before you die, your whole body becomes numb to pain.
There had been cases of leprosy in Australia, up north. There had been a leperâs colony in Queensland. There were still leper colonies in India. One of the problems with leprosy is that you feel no pain in your hardened skin, so you can burn yourself hideously and not know. I stuck pins in the thickened skin around my red dot, stuck them in harder and harder until I bled, just to make sure I could feel the sharp point going in. Some days I seemed to have to jab harder than other days. Some days I could hardly feel a thing.
My motherâs hands were rough from washing the glasses at the bistro. You washed them with a little methylated spirits in the water so the glasses shone. She seemed to often burn herself, pulling things out from our oven. I asked her if a particularly ugly burn hurt and she said, âNo, I hardly felt it when it happened and it still doesnât hurt. Looks horrible though,â and we both stared at the welt near her thumb.
It was hard to tell if my original spot had grown larger, or whether the pin pricks made it seem larger. Sometimes I got a tingly feeling in my fingers, a little like pins and needles. It happened most often in the morning, when I woke up and it was usually in the left hand, the hand I tucked under my head when I went to sleep. I wondered if I should write my symptoms down, the way Dad was keeping a pain journal.
I was really scared when my left hand ring finger went numb after the Friday sports afternoon. I went home and peered at my palm through the old magnifying glass I used to start small fires sometimes. The whirly lines on my skin looked huge and the dot was definitely not a freckle. It was not a little pimple, like the kind my mother called sweat pimples. It was not a mole. It wasnât a
Leprosy, Leonardo and Father Damien
I knew these facts off by heart: Father Damien arrived in the leperâs colony of Kalaupapa in 1873, later he himself contracted leprosy and he died in 1889. I knew that leprosy often begins as a small dot in the palm of oneâs hand. You shouldnât call it leprosy, Mr Chapman said, it was really Hansenâs Disease and the fact that it was still called leprosy in our textbooks went to show you how behind Queensland was in the education system.
I had a small red dot on my palm. I couldnât remember it being there when we lived in Nurralloo. It wasnât a freckle or a mole, it was a definite dot. It looked a little as though someone had jabbed with a red ballpoint pen or the sharp end of a compass, not hard enough for blood to bead on the surface, just hard enough for it to leak under my skin and form a pin prick red dot.
At night I would wake screaming from dreams in which my fingers or my nose slowly crumbled. I wouldnât even know it was happening and then in the dream Iâd look down, casually, see myself in a mirror, and Iâd realise in horror why the people in the street or the supermarket had backed away from me. Dad would come in when I screamed and hold me and rock me. He always asked what I had dreamt about but I never told him. It wasnât fair to tell him about the leprosy dreams when his lungs were covered with real hot spots, cancerous cells that might be still multiplying themselves.
I hated the chapter on Father Damien but I couldnât stop reading it, over and over again. Leprosy starts with a tingling and then a numbness in the extremities, often the digits. Your fingers begin to rot. The book said that when Father Damien took confession, sometimes he had to hold his nose for the stench of rotting flesh. At first he slept out in the open, rather than share a hut with a leper, and he ate his food from a flat rock. I couldnât understand how he could bear to eat. Fingers and toes fall off, noses crumble back into the face of the victim, and eventually, before you die, your whole body becomes numb to pain.
There had been cases of leprosy in Australia, up north. There had been a leperâs colony in Queensland. There were still leper colonies in India. One of the problems with leprosy is that you feel no pain in your hardened skin, so you can burn yourself hideously and not know. I stuck pins in the thickened skin around my red dot, stuck them in harder and harder until I bled, just to make sure I could feel the sharp point going in. Some days I seemed to have to jab harder than other days. Some days I could hardly feel a thing.
My motherâs hands were rough from washing the glasses at the bistro. You washed them with a little methylated spirits in the water so the glasses shone. She seemed to often burn herself, pulling things out from our oven. I asked her if a particularly ugly burn hurt and she said, âNo, I hardly felt it when it happened and it still doesnât hurt. Looks horrible though,â and we both stared at the welt near her thumb.
It was hard to tell if my original spot had grown larger, or whether the pin pricks made it seem larger. Sometimes I got a tingly feeling in my fingers, a little like pins and needles. It happened most often in the morning, when I woke up and it was usually in the left hand, the hand I tucked under my head when I went to sleep. I wondered if I should write my symptoms down, the way Dad was keeping a pain journal.
I was really scared when my left hand ring finger went numb after the Friday sports afternoon. I went home and peered at my palm through the old magnifying glass I used to start small fires sometimes. The whirly lines on my skin looked huge and the dot was definitely not a freckle. It was not a little pimple, like the kind my mother called sweat pimples. It was not a mole. It wasnât a
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