Picky Tongues — You have to choose one flavor that your sense of taste will no longer be able to distinguish. Sweet, sour, bitter, salty, umami, spicy (not a taste per se, but we’re generous): which one do you choose to lose?

Only a healthy young person would suggest I ponder what piece of my sensory apparatus I would prefer to lose.

I’ve lost both breasts to cancer, my stomach to ulcers. I’ve had my heart redesigned and lost a valve to a replacement while adding a pacemaker so it will keep beating. I’ve lost pieces of bone to remove tumors or calcification … and most of my spine is wrapped in an arthritic tunnel of love.

Much of the hair on my head — probably as a protest to the surgery and mayhem perpetrated on my body — has fallen out and apparently intends to remain gone this time. (It fell out several times before, but grew back.)

Now, you want to know what I’d choose to lose?

I do not choose to lose any more of me. Whatever original parts I’ve still got — and there are few enough of them — I will fight to keep.

At the risk of sounding critical, prompts like these are just a wee bit insensitive, don’t you think?

Categories: Personal

Tags: Daily prompt, DPchallenge, Personal, picky tongues