Melanoma; it Started with a Freckle
excerpt 6, from chapter 19
From Chapter 19:
I wish I had a big bang to end my melanoma story, but I don’t. I went back to work. My life went on. My temporary facelift was, indeed, temporary. The skin on the left side of my face went back to its regular, slightly saggy, 50 year old self. I continued to nap through a goodly portion of my prep hour. I listened to CDs on healing one’s self on my headphones whilst I dozed.
I began to train again. I rode the bike trainer at a walking pace. I gradually increased the load; first in volume, and then the intensity. Once I got the all clear to strain the tissues around my neck, I hit the weight room again. Self-awareness is bad when one trains hard. One needs to be able to dive in, 100% in the moment, to achieve peak performance. It took a long time to get there. The first reps are easier, the middle few are more difficult, and the last reps are a deep and dark hole. You need to welcome that place. But when one wonders if a six inch suture line might spring open, or a few wandering melanoma cells will use the circulatory system as a highway to one’s brain, one goes up to edge of the cliff, and peers over, rather than diving right in.
I continued to see Dr. Barkey. Never was I so glad to disrobe before another man as I was in his office. The first six months after my surgery, I saw him, or more accurately, he saw me, every month. The second six months, I went in every other month, and for the second year, we met quarterly. Today, seven years later, mainly at my insistence, we meet twice a year.
There have been bumps along the way. In 2008, several years after my surgery, my lovely Cath noted a spot on my cheek. My left cheek. Cath didn’t panic. I will say that I have never seen my wife as forceful as she was that afternoon. She was Lombardi and Ditka rolled into one.
“I don’t know what you are planning on doing this afternoon. But first, you will call Barkey’s office and get in there tomorrow. I don’t care if you have to show up at his office at 6:30 am and sit there all day, I am not going to let you wait around to get this looked at. It is brown, it is new, and it is on the same side of your face, and now, right now, you call Barkey’s office.”
I called.
Barkey keeps a ‘secret appointment’ time for emergencies.
“Be here at 6:30 am. Doctor will see you first thing.”
I was there at 6:15 am. I was sitting in the parking lot, doing my deep breathing, as the office lights came on. Cath may have been Ditka & Lombardi tough. I was Panic in Detroit scared. At 6:25 am, I was knocking on the front door. Dr. Walt himself let me in.
“Let’s see what we have. C’mon back. You can take care of the paperwork on the way out.”
I followed Dr. Barkey down the dark hall into ‘my’ exam room. I hoisted myself into the chair. He flipped on the exam light at the chair side and leaned in. Once again, I could feel his breath on my face. It was calm and regular. I concentrated on my breathing-deep and slow.
I felt his finger pressing on and around the new brown thing. I heard him feel around in his pocket for his polarized light source. I heard it click on. Out of the corner of my left eye, I could feel the intensity of its bright light. He held it there for a few minutes. I could feel the warmth as he moved it around the area of the lesion.
It snapped off.
“You’re fine.”
“Whew,” escaped quietly from my mouth.
“What is it, then?”
“Ah, some skin thing. You’re not gonna make me give you the Greek or Latin, are you? Really, it’s nothing. Hang on a sec.”
He reached around and took an instrument resembling a dental tool from a counter.
“Hold still.”
I heard a scrape. He held the instrument out in front of my face. A small piece of brownish dead skin dangled from its end.
“Just some dead skin. Don’t know why it’s brown, don’t know why it died, but I promise you, it is nothing. Don’t worry. It was flaky. It’s a rule. ‘Don’t fear the flake.’”
“See you back in six months. You’re doing great. The ladies up front will take care of the paperwork on your way out.”
I may have skipped and whistled down the hallway to the receptionist’s desk. I am certain I frolicked and gamboled. I checked out, gladly forked over the co-pay, and hopped in the car. I had taken the entire day off. If I had received bad news, I knew that work was not the place I’d want to be. I turned the key, turned on the CD player, and the Talking Heads Once in a Lifetime blasted at me. I headed north on I-75 at 70 mph; me and the Heads singing “Letting the days go by, letting the days go by, letting the days go by, once in a lifetime…”
I walked in the house. Cath was seated on the couch. She sprang up, and before she could say anything, I said, “It’s nothing. Just some flaky weird brown skin.”