Have a doctor check it out (09/24/07)

"What's that thing on your face?" my daughter asked the first day she was here.

I told her it was flesh-eating bacteria.

"How long have you had it?"

"About three or four months."

In a voice that implied I was the stupidest human on the planet, if not the entire universe, she said, "It's NOT flesh-eating bacteria. You'd be DEAD by now. Go see a doctor."

Honestly, I haven't heard that tone of voice since someone switched kids with me when she was a teenager. No way could MY kid be that snotty. Now the voice was back.

I made the appointment, sure that doc would tell me it was just dry skin or something equally innocuous. Imagine my surprise when the words, "early squamous cell carcinoma" rolled out of his mouth.

I immediately became brain dead and the only things I asked were, "What do I do now? Do I have to go see someone else?"

He said he could take care of it right there and filled a cup with liquid nitrogen. It looked like something out of a Halloween movie. I half expected tiny ghouls to emerge from the mist and start crawling over his hand.

He dipped a cotton swab into the mysterious stuff, told me to close my eyes and proceeded to give me frostbite. He let my cheek thaw then did it again. He said I could put anything on it I wanted and to come back in a couple of months so he could check it.

I did not ask if that was supposed to take care of it for good. I did not ask if I was at increased risk for developing more ugly red spots. I did not ask about anything. I just took my things and went back home.

Later I looked it up on the internet. It was a bit distracting to type in "squa" and have thousands of sites for Sponge Bob Square Pants pop up. I wasn't sure what the cartoon character had to do with anything and finished typing squamous - which I spelled incorrectly the first three or four times I tried it.

I found out that it is the second most common skin cancer. Basal cell carcinoma is first. Between these two skin cancers they account for less than 0.1% of cancer deaths.

OK, so I wasn't going to die from this. There are about 250,000 new cases of this skin cancer every year.

Wow, that's a lot.

Two different sites said that if it is overlooked, as it is 3 to 4 percent of the time, it can spread and become life-threatening. Yikes. It's a good thing Beth made me go to the doc.

Most skin cancers are caused by overexposure to the sun. People with fair skin (or pale white in my case), light hair (nope, not me), and light eyes (nope, again) are more likely to get zapped with skin cancer.

Then it went on to say that most dark skinned people who get skin cancer get the squamous cell kind. Now wait a minute! That didn't make any sense to me.

It was the Internet and one should take things read with several grains of salt.

The other thing I discovered was that not a single one of the pictures I found looked anything like what was on my face. What I had was a red spot about half to maybe an inch square. Half of it looked like it was healing up and the other half wasn't. It started as a patch of dry skin. Weeks of applying various lotions and moisturizers did no good. It was flat and a nice rosy red. Half of it was raw like the skin under a scab. It did not hurt. It did not spread. It also did not heal.

Doc asked about a family history of skin cancer. As far as I know I am the first. We have a history of breast cancer, lung and/or stomach cancer, and one rectal cancer coupled with insanity.

Lord knows, that last one would make me insane also! But no skin cancer that I know of.

I am not a sun-worshipper. I have had exactly one tan in my life - way back when I was about 15. Unfortunately I have had several sunburns and rarely remember to use sunblock. So next time I have something that won't heal I will have it checked out and not put it off as long.

At least it wasn't flesh-eating bacteria.[[In-content Ad]]