Symbionts

Something was very wrong when,  a week after the tumble on the rock rubble, my lower right shin was shiny tight and very red. The four wounds had scabbed but were surrounded by a livid region around which red dots were sprinkled. Indeed, a double line of dots seemed to be heading down to my ankle. There was little pain, except a sort of ache when I stood for a while. Even when I touched the four crusts that marked where my skin had been torn, the pain was moderate. Still, I was concerned.

They say that if we, our genetic material, were to absent ourselves, our bacteria on our skin are dense enough would be recognizable as us. There's a lot of talk these days about our digestive flora and its effect on our health, even our moods.  I'd say, we're just beginning to understand the depth and richness of our relationship with our microbiota.

The question of where I end and you, bacteria, begin is a complex and subtle one. I represent an environment conducive to many species of you prokaryotes; you in turn contribute almost to the point of constituting my eukaryotic self. We've lived intimately together all my life and a couple of billion years before. In fact, the story is that several of your type of cells combined to make one of mine and so the ball got rolling. Symbionts perhaps don't say 'thank you' but at least they shouldn't try to commit suicide by killing each other.

However, the course of antibiotics my doctor prescribed is a step in that direction. The assortments of interacting species that characterize the different bacterial communities in and on me are changed as these fungal derivatived antibiotics subtract this or that variety from the mix. Of course, this is what I want; that the particular strain making my leg septic be subdued and eliminated. I don't know where you came from or how you overrode the natural healing process, but you don't wish me well and I want you gone.

But not you others, my friendly prokes: it's not you I'm angry with or afraid of. If my scorched earth remedy has knocked the systems we've built together out of whack, I apologize. Do continue to think of me as home. Allow me still to harvest the products of your presence. Don't take too seriously the rants that circulate about your kind in general. Don't take it personally if I continue to wash my hands because there are among you some of those bacteria untamed to our common ways.

Of course, my address may seem a little presumptuous since there's perhaps more of you in me than me in me. I may be the minority in myself, and  it's inappropriate to be patronizing. Still, halfway through the 10 days of hot pink pills I take three times a day, I'm glad the vandals are visibly vanishing, and that you are still here.