How Body and Boundaries Are Redefined in a World of Medical Technology and Healing
- 7 days ago
- 6 min read
Written by Sophie Reyer, Author
Sophie Anna Reyer is an Austrian author of multiple theater pieces and publications. She was born in Vienna, Austria. Reyer discovered her various profound talents in the arts at a young age as a child prodigy.
Misfortune strikes unexpectedly, shattering the peace of everyday life. Through the lens of a traumatic accident and the subsequent journey through pain and recovery, this article explores the intersection of the human body, technology, and the evolving concept of individual identity.
Misfortune
Misfortune often comes without warning. I remember everything being peaceful before my accident. I was walking quickly because I was in a hurry. Today, I had to teach at the Pedagogical University. I didn’t see the spot. Ice. I slipped. I fell. Without warning, the sky lost its balance. Then: nothing. I was a black spot floating on the rolling sea of asphalt. Everything moved around me in my dizziness, but only I remained still. My body felt swollen. I was a blot, and my shoulder pulsed wildly. Then a voice:
“Did you fall?” asked the woman.
I didn’t know. I knew nothing. I writhed. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe into my shoulder. She made a call. Someone brought a blanket. Someone held my finger, just the tips. I felt something still, I think. But not much. The touch at the fingertip was all I sensed, alongside the pain and breathlessness.
“By the time someone gets here, she’ll be dead!” I heard someone say. I only saw the sky. Paramedics appeared. “Can you turn?” They wanted to roll me to the side; I screamed in pain.
Waiting
It took a while to lift me from the ground. They tilted me, then lifted me. I was like a stone. Nothing radiated from my shoulder, and it extended down into my legs. Around me, it was cold. Frost. Thin clouds scattered across the sky. They pushed me into the car; it moved. The wheels of the hill behind the window spun in the curve. That’s all. Dazzling landscape in the distance. My teeth ached. I marveled that I was still alive. Eventually, we reached the hospital.
A nurse helped me undress for the X-ray. I was dying of pain. She unclasped my bra. “I’m not very good at this with others,” she admitted. I laughed. “Neither am I.” She was kind. She wanted me to be treated with dignity. She covered me with a white gown.
“The male colleagues have nothing to do with your body,” she said. Then they pushed me into a tube, in and out. The sobering news followed: “Your shoulder is shattered!” I didn’t want to accept it.
“I have to go to the university, teach!” I said. “That’s not possible now. We’ll operate in a few hours!”
Dim everything, white walls. I was wheeled along. I spent my time lying down, waiting for the operation. Frog’s-eye view. What I saw was mainly bright, sometimes faces passing by or bending over me. They wore masks, as did I, but it no longer registered. I consisted only of pain in my shoulder. The pain was deep; it radiated through my body. They took blood. I was a wired self. A self on IV drips. Time passed. I waited. They put on my compression stockings and hooked me to a tube. I didn’t know how to distract myself. The pain was nameless. They took blood. They called me “the broken shoulder.”
Diminution
Gradually, I became smaller and smaller. I felt less and less like an autonomous being and more like an aggregation of biochemical mechanisms. In the hospital, humans were no longer seen as individuals, I thought. Pancreas functions can now be controlled by iPhones. Humans become cyborgs, using wearable sensors and computers to compensate for their illnesses: from hearing aids to bypass surgeries, all of it! But the healthy also enjoy these luxuries: thus, a fitness app, like the one I recently remembered, called Deadline, can tell you how many years you have left to live if you maintain your usual routines.
The Quantified Self movement, meanwhile, operates on the idea that humans consist not of a self, but of mathematical patterns. One should not meditate, but collect data and patterns to discover one’s true potential, I once read. Wearables, sweat sensors, and apps serve this purpose. Such a fitness bracelet collects sweat, measures pulse, and gives advice (for example: “play chess once a week against dementia,” etc.). People develop ever deeper relationships with their DNA. Jolie Angela, for instance, had her breasts removed preemptively because she was diagnosed at risk for breast cancer, courageously setting an example, long before any illness struck! Funny, by the way, that she played the leading role in the film Cyborg 2, I thought, and I grinned. Then the pain returned, or rather, pressed down.
Finally, I was pushed into the operating room. The world was only up, and I was down. Everyone stared at me, dissecting me with their eyes. Fortunately, the anesthetist was kind; she joked. It helped with the pain.
“Breathe in and out and think of me, sweetie!” she said, pressing the device to my lips. I fell asleep. I was in a bright room in anesthesia. A room of soft light. Empty and warm, a little orange, like in a womb.
Waking up
When I woke up, I was mostly dizzy and couldn’t swallow. I was given cotton balls in my mouth and heard a voice. I spent the next night lying down, heavy as a stone. Contemporary medicine is not to be underestimated, I thought, as I stood. Last night, I nearly bled out; today, I could already go home. I should feel grateful, I admitted. I was amazed, even very much so. Technology and medicine now possessed unprecedented capabilities. Yet my existence seemed unrelated to utopian cyborg fantasies. From now on, I would beep when passing through security, and my hand would move normally again, but I felt neither strong nor optimized, rather alien within myself.
As I took a taxi home, many images crowded my mind. Who was Manami? An undead? A death angel who took the old woman but then let me go? I didn’t know. Thoughts raced as I arrived home. I recalled something I read recently: companies like Google aimed to go even deeper than just the body. For instance, the app 23andMe tells you who you truly are, analyzing your genetic material. Does another man suit you better, even if he seems less fit physically, because he smells better, has better chromosomes? The answer, an article explained, is in 23andMe. But where, in all this swirl, has the concept of the “I” gone? And if my shoulder can be replaced overnight, what about the rest of me? Recent developments suggested that this belief in our irreplaceability could gradually become obsolete. Through various trends, one inevitably sees that the notion of the individual must be reconsidered.
On one hand, people increasingly lose economic and military utility, machines can now perform tasks much more easily, and on the other hand, political and economic systems assign them less importance. While the collective remains important, the individual seems to lose significance, especially if not serving the market. The system still values some individuals, but they are likely to move within elite circles, while the masses lose worth, purpose, and meaning. Until the 20th century, every hand capable of operating a lever or a gun had value. Today, robots handle these instruments much more efficiently. So why need humans of flesh and blood? Why need me?
A new beginning
I start anew, differently, with a foreign body inside me. I ask myself: what defines me, beyond flesh, chemistry, and DNA? I think I want to act against a world dominated by fear and oppression, to observe society and its effects with fresh eyes, and to translate core themes into the language of art. But is this the full answer to the question of my existence? Certainly not. And more insight cannot be ordered from Amazon either. So I set out again, into the open. A journey begins, seeking perhaps a better, perhaps truer self, beyond shoulders and implants. Where will it take me?
Read more from Sophie Reyer
Sophie Reyer, Author
Sophie Anna Reyer is an Austrian author of multiple theater pieces and publications. She was born in Vienna, Austria. Reyer discovered her various profound talents in the arts at a young age as a child prodigy. She is a writer of theater pieces (S. Fischer) and novels (Emons) and was shortlisted for the Austrian Book Award in 2019 and 2021.
