The Yellow World Read Online Free PDF Page B

ourselves.
    Breathe, walk, laugh, enjoy yourself. It’s that easy. This was the advice that the nurse gave me as he took me to surgery when they were going to cut off my leg. I was thinking about the leg I was going to lose and he spoke to me about breathing, about walking, about laughing. Remember that he ended up by asking if he was boring me. Actually, I wasn’t bored at all. Sometimes we are so focused on ourselves, on our own problems, that we forget that we are right at that moment on the edge of making the greatest discovery of our lives.

6
When you are sick, they keep tabs on your life, a medical record. When you are well, you should do the same: Keep a life record
    The patient is cured
.
 
    —the last sentence and the last line that my oncologist wrote on my medical record
    My medical record is endless; it grew fatter day by day, month by month, year by year. The last time I went to the hospital they brought it on a cart; it was so big that they couldn’t carry it.
    I like the color of the file they used for the record, mostly because it’s the same shade as it was on the first day. There are few things in our lives that stay the same. It’s still a neutral gray color. I don’t think gray is ugly; it’s just got a bad reputation: gray days, gray suits … It’s a much underappreciated color, beaten only by black. But I think it’s the perfectcolor for a medical record because, as I see it, a record has to be distinguished, and gray is a very distinguished color.
    There are letters from more than twenty doctors in my file:
    1. From my oncologist (a strange job, but someone has to do it). They’re the bad guys for anyone who’s got cancer. Any doctor who chooses this as his specialty deserves my complete admiration.
    2. From my traumatologist, who’s the guy who has all the success. I’d have liked to have been a traumatologist; it seems to me the closest thing to being God.
    3. From my physiotherapist …
    4. From my radiologist …
    5. From …
    The list goes on. I remember when I was a kid I went to get soccer players’ autographs; this is the same but with doctors, and with the added difference that instead of a single illegible scrawl there are hundreds.
    The last day that I saw my file was in the oncologist’s office. He wrote, “The patient is cured.” Underneath it, I remember perfectly, he drew a horizontal line. The line impressed me greatly. He closed the file, put it back on the cart, and the orderly took it away. That was the last time I saw it.
    I thought I wouldn’t miss the file. But when I returned to normal life, I thought it would be a good idea to have one: not a medical history but a life history.
    I bought a file (gray, of course) and thought about what toput into it. I was sure that I would write a diary: Diaries are living objects and extremely recommendable. How good it is to be able to read the things that worried you two or three years ago and to realize that now you couldn’t care less about them (sometimes because they’re goals that you’ve attained, sometimes because they’re things you didn’t really want anyway).
    But diaries are only a part of a life history; they’re not enough in themselves. The pleasure of having a life history is to be able to include anything that happens in your life, every important moment, and when something stresses you out you can go to your record, open it, and calm yourself down.
    You might ask if it’s necessary to have this sort of control for your life. My answer is a definite “yes.” Do you know why people have medical histories? Simply to note down and be sure about when a crisis occurred, how it was overcome, when the next setback occurred, what they felt when it came along, how it was sorted out. Whenever there was a problem, my doctors would always look at the medical record. I’m sure I managed to avoid loads of X-rays, blood tests, and duplicate prescriptions. Memory is so selective.…
    The good thing about