Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Maybe I am or maybe I'm not a good skin cancer patient

Three and 1/2 years ago, I had a mole removed that came back as melanoma. It wasn't a shock to me because it had all the tell tale signs of the ABCD chart but it was still a scary time until we knew that it was caught in its earliest stages.


Anyway, I loved the standard follow up visits every 6 months for the first two years because I knew I was being looked at by professionals and I didn't need to obsess about it myself. I was even sent up to the Huntsman Cancer Institute for a melanoma research study and had two separate melanoma specialist check me out.

Well, now, we are on the "just come in every year rotation" and I have gone a little neuritic. I have to do it all on my own for a WHOLE YEAR. No specialist reassuring me that I am not going to die of scary skin cancer.

The other day, after stressing about another mole I had convinced myself was cancer, I finally called my skin cancer doctor and asked if I could come in RIGHT now. I repeated several times, "You have to have a cancellation right?" If you are at all familiar with going to a dermatologist, they are always busy and booked out months ahead. Well, I must have sounded convincing because they got me in right away. After sitting in the waiting room, convincing myself it was bad news and I would be sent in for all kinds of horrible testing, the doctor looked at, gave it some benign name and only because I insisted, did he freeze it off. (He refused to biopsy it because he knew it a BK something or other.)

So, I suppose for a dermatologist I help him pay his mortgage because I show up regularly convinced I have something bad and it needs to be removed but maybe he thinks I little bit neurotic. You think?

3 comments:

Jane Anne said...

It is a worry! Glad it worked out well.

Anonymous said...

A little neurotic? You? No way.

love.boxes said...

Well.. the c-word is one of the worst things on the planet and we need to get rid of it.