From Arthritis to Zoster

The spot in the middle of my back had itched for months—probably for years, come to think of it. I’d asked my wife to check it several times; it got to the point that she’d walk past, tug up my shirt, and look things over without me even asking.

A couple of weeks ago, Tonya announced, “That spot looks like it’s changed.”

With that simple statement, the fate of a little mole that had nested on my torso, tucked conveniently out of my field of vision, was sealed. We made an appointment with the doctor.

I’m one of those people who’s spackled with little dark spots; all of those nevi, moles, freckles, dots, and ditzels make me wonder if there isn’t a dalmation tucked into the family tree somewhere. Over the years, I’ve had a few of them pared off, always faintly worried that they’d turned traitor…and always reassured by the bland, benign pathology reports.

So it wasn’t particularly noteworthy when the doc remarked, “It looks like a lot of the other spots on your back, but—since you say it’s changed—we’ll take care of it. I don’t think it’ll be abnormal.”

We all spent a pleasant few minutes discussing the weather, our kids, and the state of medical education as the doc helped a med student from the University of Washington punch a 5 mm hole in my pelt. She dropped the tiny plug of tissue into a bottle of preservative. A couple of stitches, a Band-Aid, and we were done.

“Keep it dry,” the doc admonished. Tonya would remove the stitches in a week or so.

My greatest worry was that my pool training for a couple of upcoming open-water swims would be interrupted for a few days.

When the phone rang ten days later, I was unconcerned—but a little surprised—when I heard the doctor’s voice on the line; usually one of the nurses called with normal results.

As he read the path report, I wondered how many times over the years I had delivered bad news in a similar fashion.

In even, reassuring tones (what I used to call “wafflespeak”), my physician announced, “Well, we’ve probably taken care of what we were trying to prevent. The pathology report indicates that you have a malignant melanoma in situ. The margins of your biopsy weren’t quite clear…”

Okay. There’s bad news, but there’s good news, too. I had the advantage of knowing just what the doc was talking about. A small breach in my immune system had allowed a nasty little nidus of cells to get a foothold.

But it hadn’t gotten far. 

“Thank God I’ve been eating transfer factors for five years,” I thought.

While we discussed my situation, another extraneous notion flickered through my mind: “What if I was someone who didn’t have a medical background? Would I be scared spitless right about now?”

I have to hand it to the doc, though. He didn’t assume that I knew anything (in most instances, it’s safe to assume that I don’t). He went through the drill as if he was talking to any other patient. We discussed the excellent prognosis for a lesion like mine—survival rate at five years is better than 98%, etc.—and we reviewed what needed to be done next.

The following day, I was once again face down on the exam table while the doc carved a larger wedge from my hide.

“Keep it dry,” he repeated as he pasted a bandage over the site. “I’ll give you a call next week to let you know about the path report.”

So. As I hover over the keyboard, feeling the itch and tug of a row of sutures across my mid-back, knowing that I’m probably not going to make those open-water swims, I’m pretty sure that this particular episode isn’t my “something-waiting-in-the-wings-for-everyone” episode. I’m quite certain that I’m going to get a phone call, sometime this week, that will confirm the indolent nature of a cancer that’s probably been brewing in my epithelium for a long time. I’m confident that everything will be alright this time around.

But I’m also mulling the remark that my doctor made when this all started, when he first took a look at my aging integument and stated, “It looks like a lot of the other spots on your back…”