RDP: fungible

Fungible? That’s a new one for me. Is it real? Is it something that has potential to grow fungus?

A tumour grew on my head for my whole life. It looked like a bald spot: I was told was a birthmark. Of course when I was a teenager I lived in fear that the wind would blow and someone would see it! The horror! Someone behind me going, “Hey! You have a bald spot!” was beyond humiliation. The older I got; the less I cared.

Sometimes it would change and get itchy but every doctor would say, “We’ll keep an eye on that.” It even went black once….. “We’ll keep an eye on that.” he said again.

When I moved to this area I got a new doctor who wanted to get a better look at it. He wanted to burn it off.

He did it in his office with local anesthetic. It turned out to be more than he anticipated and found a tumour had been growing with my hair in and through it so only the top was ever visible. It was much bigger than he thought and he removed a big lump. I had a huge burn hole on my head. When the freezing came out it was excruciating and I only had Tylenol.

He called me in for a second burning.

He said, “You wouldn’t believe what I took off your head, I sent it to the University.”

(and damn it, I wish he’d shown it to me!)

He read out the medical terms for what it was but what burned into my memory was ‘fungal’. It was partially fungal.

Now there is no birth mark, no bald spot. That thing grew on my head my whole life and it was fungible.

Okay, I just looked up the meaning of fungible; it as a way different meaning! Since I already wrote this, I think I like my definition better.

fungible; (of goods contracted for without an individual specimen being specified) able to replace or be replaced by another identical item; mutually interchangeable.

cropped-ragtag-header