Month from Hell: It gets even BETTER!

Honest to God. If you wrote this stuff into a novel, no one would believe it. Really: it has been just about a disaster a day for the past month or six weeks. Today’s disaster: cancer.

Yeah. The thing I thought was ringworm? Young Dr. Kildare believes it’s skin cancer. He thinks it’s a squamous cell carcinoma.

Charming.

Mine doesn’t look quite like the things in those images. There are some infections you can get that actually look a lot more like it. Whatever it is: dayum! Another little drama…another PITA.

Truth to tell, though: this is a blessing in disguise. I have not been able to get in the door to a dermatologist since my last dermatologist fell off the radar. In our parts, their schedules are so jammed with skin cancer patients and Baby Boomers seeking rejuvenation treatments (which apparently is where the big bucks are…) that many of them won’t even make an appointment with you. Even at the Mayo, where I’m a patient, the wait list is six months.

He gave me a referral, and incredibly, when I dialed the number…are you ready for this?…a live human being answered the phone!!!!!

Jayzus. I don’t know when I last ran into a human being on the phone at a doctor’s office…not in living memory. 😀

Anyway, they arranged to see me on Tuesday. Not only that, but the doc will do a full-body exam, which will give me a chance to ask is there’s anything she can do about the damn neurofibromas. And of course, get rid of the current crop of actinic keratoses, which anyone who lives in Arizona for many years routinely sprouts.

So I don’t feel like it’s exactly world-ending. It’s just another damn nuisance to soak up time. The drive to YDK’s office takes a good 40 minutes, and this dermatologist is even further west — basically out in the vicinity of Sun City, only further to the south.