Scar

With the second biopsy behind me, I can now consider myself skin cancer free (and yes, I did find a new dermatologist).

What's left to remind me is the scooped out part of my nose, my nose crater, the pothole that will be on the side of my nose for the rest of my life. It's small, smaller than a pencil eraser and perfectly round. It's about the size of the chicken pox scar on my forehead. It's smooth and pink now, completely healed.

This is what I like about it: I can touch it, feel those symmetrical edges and the smooth interior and know, the cancer is not back. Because recurrence is so common with basal cell carcinoma, this is reassuring. I can wake up every morning and touch it, see it in the mirror and know it's the same. As long as the scar remains unchanged, I will know the cancer's gone from that particular spot.

If there's a change, if the skin begins to grow back, I'll be able to see it immediately and make a beeline to my shiny new dermatologist's office and do something about it. I'm smarter now. I know more about my options.

So for now, I'm making friends with the little divot on the right side of my nose. It's a small imperfection, but a huge reminder that I'm okay, I'm alive. I am still here.

It Would Be a Dark and Bloody Episode of I Love Lucy

With the course of chemo behind me, I went back to the dermatologist today. I was confident. I felt calm and upbeat about the whole thing. I found a good parking place. I knit on The Kid's sock in the waiting room. Everything was fine until I got back into the exam room and then for the twenty five minutes I sat there, I had a knock down drag out full on heart pounding mind racing cold sweat nearly throwing up hands shaking panic attack. I couldn't stop thinking abut how painful the first biopsy had been and how there was not a whole lot of nose left in that particular spot and how tender and sore it already was from the chemo and every time I thought about anyone cutting out more, I wound up a little bit tighter.

I haven't had a panic attack in about fifteen years. It was ghastly. By the time the doctor came in I was a wreck but trying very hard to appear normal. I answered her questions very slowly and did deep breathing in between each sentence. I was so close to tears, trying so hard not to fall apart all over her, I must have sounded like a robot – a hyperventilating, very frightened robot.

Here's the good news – she says my nose looks great. The term she used was "clean" and I gave her this strange look thinking, well I came here to have you specifically look at my nose, do you think I would not wash my face before I came? But by clean she meant free of those pesky cancer cells. It look like the chemo did a good job. Hooray!

She did another biopsy to be sure and here's where the story takes a macabre, southern gothic, I Love Lucy kind of turn, (if I Love Lucy had been written by a codependent southern woman). The biopsy hurt just as much as I thought it would. (Even the pen she used to mark the spot hurt.) I lay there and thought happy thoughts and tried to take deep breaths and not flinch or scream and get through it with some modicum of (if not grace) decency. But then my nose would not stop bleeding. She sent in the nurse to bandage me up and my nose bled and bled and bled. The nurse kept putting what I assume is magic stop bleeding stuff on it and it kept on bleeding. She was visibly frustrated and whenever she turned around to get clean gauze, blood would run down my face. It just would not stop bleeding and at some point it became almost absurd. I kept apologizing, as if my nose were a naughty child.

The nurse got increasingly frustrated and was huffing and puffing and snatching the gauze and none too gently applying pressure to the wound. I kept saying, I'm so sorry – it's never done this before. At one point she actually asked me, through gritted teeth, to please stop bleeding – as if I were bleeding on purpose just to mess with her Friday mood. The doctor was called in and cauterized the poor thing, my nose – not the nurse, not once but twice, before the bleeding stopped. This, on top of the adrenaline dump from the panic attack, just about did me in. I stumbled out to the car and sobbed and cried and called Lefty and cried some more.

Then I did what we grownups do. I got myself together, blew my nose, drank some water and drove myself home.

I am thrilled that my nose looks "clean" and I hope the biopsy will make it official.

Thank you for all your kind thoughts and have a lovely weekend.

True Confessions

I am way behind on my reading. Almost every surface in the house is covered with a pile of books or a stack of flipped open half-read magazines.

We're leaving for vacation on Friday and I am not even remotely close to being ready to go.

I opened a storage container today and discovered an entire plastic pumpkin full of Halloween candy.

I keep thinking that if I just try harder this cloud of chemo-induced fatigue will lift and I'll be able to function the way I normally do.

I find it difficult to relax.

I wrote a long blog post this weekend and it was only as I was proofreading it that I realized it was just one very long whiny complaint. And I'm trying to quit.

How was your weekend?

Weekend Round Up

We've had a pretty mellow weekend, lots of playing and good food. This is a good thing because I am wiped out. I'm taking this as a sign that the chemo is doing it's job and I'm so exhausted because my immune system's working overtime blasting those pesky skin cells. But, whatever the reason, I am exhausted.

I had some BlogHer pangs – not because I wanted to go, because I didn't. It's just not my cup of tea or ball of wax or idea of a good time, but I just wondered how it was going – who was the drunkest, or craziest. I'm calling it long distance fly on the wall syndrome.

On Saturday, I had to go to Target and buy every member of our family underpants. The Kid had outgrown his latest and Lefty and I had wore our poor old undies into the ground. Nothing like new underpants to brighten up your day.

For those of you keeping score at home, here's the return of my nose stand in. The Kid helped me photoshop the image a little. It is a mighty humbling thing when your seven year old has to assist you in a computer task. As you can see, the edges are a little less distinct and the color is changing. I would describe it as dry and flaky.

Oh, and here are some clouds hovering over the bell tower on the Trinity campus this afternoon.


We went to the pool – ask me how much I love my new swim suit with the kicky little cover up skirt…

Summer Cut

Here's my hair before I left the house this morning (I think the shadow here is Bossy's seagull or The Kid's finger)



and here's what I came home with.

I love a summer haircut. My head feels 20 pounds lighter.



This photo is a lesson in self awareness for me. Talking to my mom this morning, she asked if I would post my new hair photo today and I said I would, but only from the back because I'm really self conscious about how this thing on my nose looks. You are looking right at the place on my nose where the biopsy occurred, where the area is beginning to swell and flake. Can you see it? This thing has become so huge in my mind, I have completely lost all perspective about how visible it is because, my friends, in this picture, I don't see a thing.

Now, the handheld magnifying mirror is another story.

Two Birds, One Stone

Behold, The Kid and I took a Bionicle friend to the zoo.

The Kid himself took these two hippo shots. I think he may be a budding photographer.





In light of all that transpired last week I want to promise that his blog will not become "The Skin Cancer Chronicles". I will continue to write about Lefty and The Kid and drinking wine and trying to write and parenting. This, any blog book will tell you, is my big mistake. I have no platform. I should just choose one thing and write about that and not be all over the map like this. Alas… So, when the scab fell off my biopsy site, which is actually my tumor, (can you see I'm still stumbling around in all this terminology – would it be okay if I just said "that thing, you know that thing on my nose?") I had this crazy, middle of the night idea that I would take a picture of my nose and thus share the skin ravaging chemo course with all of you fine folk. Fortunately, in the dawn's early light this seemed like kind of an icky idea. I do want a vehicle to talk about the process though, so…

this is my tumor stand in. I picked a moon crater because post-biopsy, the tiny spot on my nose resembles a crater more than anything else. As the chemo does it's job, I'll use this photo to demonstrate what's going on with my actual nose and in the process hopefully work on my Photoshop skills. Two birds, one stone!

Fingers Crossed

My Friday was split into two distinct sections. The morning, when The Kid and I went to the downtown library and came out with an armload of books and The Kid stepped in the fountain up to his calf and had to squish to the car with his left sneaker full of water and the afternoon, when I found out I have skin cancer.

The bump from my nose that was biopsied is a "superficial basal cell carcinoma". The superficial part makes it sound minor, doesn't it? Like a ding in your fender or the dining room wall – something that could be fixed with a little sandpaper or spackle.

The nurse got to the word carcinoma and I blacked out for a split second – my brain just stopped processing and just like in the movies, I had to ask her to repeat it. Then to spell it out, so I could scribble the words onto my datebook. Afterwards, I kept going back to the kitchen and looking at the penciled words, to be sure of what they really said.

Basal cell carcinoma is the most common type of skin cancer. The nurse repeated this several times as if the fact that it was common would make me feel better. The subtype, superficial, is the least common subtype. So, I have the least common subtype of the most common type of skin cancer.

It is highly treatable, especially when it is caught early and I have to believe we did catch this on the early side, despite the fact that I cancelled and rescheduled my appointment with the dermatologist FOUR times.

I've been waiting for this particular shoe to drop for the last ten years. I have very fair skin. I spent a large portion of my youth and childhood basically frying my skin in the hopes of getting a tan. I wanted, with all of my teenage heart, to be tan and blonde as the Stacey sisters across the street. Most of you have seen my hair, the blonde wasn't happening. But I thought if I just burned and peeled often enough, one summer day I would wake up with that beautiful toast colored skin I dreamed of.

I'm undergoing a six week course of topical chemotherapy which will turn the tiny spot on my nose to a nasty ulcerated looking lesion. When the lesion heals, maybe the cancer will be gone.

I am a believer and an optimist. I believe this course of chemo can work for me. I am also doing everything else in my power to ramp up my immune system and help my body fight off the cells that turned my life upside down yesterday.

I have always been straight with The Kid about sunscreen and why we use it, yet I have not used the word "cancer" when explaining all this to him. It's too loaded and some nasty kid on the playground will tell him I'm going to die and I cannot let that happen. We've talked about damaged skin cells and how my nose is going to look a lot worse before it looks better. As a parent, I hope I can teach him that seemingly innocent decisions, getting a tan, or smoking a cigarette or two can have serious, grown up consequences further down the road.

I keep thinking of all those summer afternoons on the beach, frying in the sun when I would have much rather been inside reading a book.

My fingers are crossed. If you want, you can cross yours for me too.