Cut. Putting the Wide in Wide Local Incision.
The one in which melanoma catches up with me.
Just a quick note before you get into this week’s issue. I’m fine. I will be fine. With that out of the way, dig in.
Don’t like to read? Let me read it to you 👈
As luck would have it, I received my melanoma diagnosis on the morning of what I later read was World Cancer Day1. I mean, of course I did. I’m a joiner. I jump to it and wave my sign. Is there a chant for it? I’m in.
Whaddawe want?
MELANOMA
When do we want it?
Now!
Hmmm. Not to be a critic, but that needs some work.
You might not find the above funny, and neither do I, but when I get the news early on a Friday morning the jokes start right away. One must refuse to make eye contact with one’s terror. If ya don’t joke ya choke, or something.
This stage is called Denial, aka the Truth Avoidance stage, aka the Let’s Watch an Entire Season of Something on Netflix and Pretend This Isn’t Happening stage.
This actor is on stage and I don’t know how to act.
Reduce coffee intake.
Brush teeth after every meal.
Water plants regularly.
No overnight dishes in the sink.
Delete Facebook.
Make a will.
“You don’t have a will?”
No, Michael, I don’t.
“You should have a will.”
Weirdly—or coincidentally, I guess—my brother and I had had this discussion about making a will prior to this week’s issue of the Melanoma Gazzette dropping onto my driveway. As I FaceTimed with him to share the “I don’t want you to panic, but I should tell you about my melanoma” news, the word ‘will’ blinked on my To Do list.
I should have a will. Not that this stupid mole is gonna be the thing to take me out—I’m taking it out first—but I am going to die eventually2 and I should have a will. I’m 50 years old with more behind me than in front, and I think someone should get my records when I die. Thirty years from now.
“I keep meaning to do it,” I’d told him at the time, making my usual excuses.
Meaning to.
Meaning to.
Does one find meaning in meaning to?
This Big Thought drifts in and fogs up the glass of the proceedings.
“How’s your new tractor?” I ask, changing the subject and clearing the air. We flip our conversation cassette over to Side B. I am still spooling.
I tell a handful of people about my melanoma. My dark and moody emo mole. The squatter in the center of my back, right between my shoulder blades. I have to twist and contort to see it in the mirror, but it’s absolutely THERE.
“It’s like the right-wing domestic terrorist in his garage who’s made the homemade bomb but doesn’t know what to do with it.”
This is what I say. This is how I explain it to people. What a quip! What wit! What a hot bon mot!
I put it this way because I can’t help myself with trying to market things correctly, plus it seems a fitting description for the lurking menace and its unexploded ordnance. This mole is slowly expanding outside the perimeter of its assembly desk on my skin, but it has yet to explore territory outside its current domicile. It is lazy invasive. Melanoma in situ, as they officially label it in my initial medical report. Still incredibly dangerous, but contained fully within its own garage with the fuse lit and the roller door closed. It has yet to write its manifesto.
“I’m so glad you came in when you did.”
“We’ve caught it early.”
These are words that drift into my brain. They don’t set off any alarms. Yet. I push anxiety to the corner and try to dispel the worry I hear in the voices of those I tell. I am positively cheerful about it.
Until I’m not.
A few texts from friends start to nibble at the edge of my denial cocoon.
“Do you need anything?” says one. “How can I help?” another.
Help? Why would I need help? Need anything? What would I need? On a whim, I Google some no-context terms I find in my medical report. One scary search rabbit hole, some distressing YouTube videos, a sleepless night, and oh.
Oh.
This is a thing.
Oh. Fuck.
I have skin cancer on my back.
I have melanoma.
Joke?
Strewth! Could I be more of a walking “I love a sunburnt country”3 Australian cliché right now?
Meditate twice a day.
Drink green tea.
Tend to my gut garden.
Vitamin D supplements.
Stay on top of my finances.
Less TV, more life.
Get rid of unimportant stuff.
Recognize the difference between having A purpose and living WITH purpose.4
Stop making lists.
Do.
Do not delay.
“Some people turn into vampires.”
This is what my dermatologist tells me a week after I learn of my garage lurker. The way of the vampire—big hats, sunglasses, umbrellas, only going out at night—this is just one reaction upon hearing a melanoma diagnosis. There are other non-vampiric options. Or perhaps just different degrees of embracing vampire life? I will look into this.
She examines my arms, notes the faint winter tan line and tuts. I explain that I’m what people would call an ‘avid cyclist’ and that it’s been unseasonably warm lately. Warm enough to peel arm protection off while riding. Secretly, I’m breathing a sigh of relief that it’s February and she’s not seeing the full nuke of summer cycling on my skin.
“What sort of sunscreen do you use?”
“Whatever’s in the bathroom.”
“Well, it’s not good enough.”
The inspection continues. Other potential terrorists are put on my No-Fly list for interrogation at a later date after this current drama is over. I look out the window to the Scott’s Valley parking lot as she tells me the origin story and star sign5 of each of my moles.
I hope this is one-way glass.
“We’ve caught it early,” she says later, explaining what will happen with my exorcism procedure. She doesn’t call it an exorcism, but what else can it be? We must rid my flesh of this awful blight. Chant to our gods to release me of my burden. Get the good holy scalpel anointed with the righteous holy excision oil and forcibly remove this interloper.
We say it and it shall be done. Begone, evil one!
Hallelujah and all that jazz.
Buy sunscreen.
Learn a language.
Write a song.
Play it.
Sing it.
We send the Feds into the garage on a Wednesday. It is a doctor in San Jose who kicks the door in, explaining before he does so that there’ll be a scar about yea-big. The gap between his thumb and his index finger seems eye-bogglingly large. It is a fall down gap which looks, in ‘ fish was this big’ scale, to be about 10 cm to me. But that can’t be right, can it?6
“We’ve caught it early,” he says, trying to soothe my nerves. What a team we are. Team Mole Catcher, the Early Squad.
“What happens to my little friend after this?” I ask, my head face down on the examination table as he hacks away at it. I imagine my little friend being hurled viciously into the flames of wicked retribution. Of it burning to a fiery crisp in a Malevolent Flesh Disposal Furnace, with a heavy steel door and the glow of destruction in its heart.
But no.
“It’s going to the lab for testing,” he says.
Oh, of course. That makes sense. Like any good and misunderstood terrorist, it gets to be interviewed. Yes, we should all hear its side of the story so that we may empathize with its plight. Cryon reads:
MISUNDERSTOOD MELANOMA: “I WAS ONLY TRYING TO GROW!”
The tug of stitching begins, and as I lay there with a surgical drape over my head and the coolness of the air on my exposed back, I think back to earlier in the day. Before the doctor came in and I sat anxiously on the surgical bed while being prepped by the nurse. Or is she called an assistant? I’m not sure.
“I love your boots!”
She’d paused mid-clipboard checklist to look me over and I turned my foot to give her a better look at them. She’d nodded as I’d rambled on about these being my favorite boots as if they mattered at all today. Nodding, she turned away to get my sexy gown for me.
“You look so cute today!”
Prep talk became pep talk. I smiled beneath my mask.
You know, I don’t even care if that’s something she says to everyone who is about to get cancer cut off them. I don’t care if she was lying and only saying it to make me feel good on an anxious day. I DO look cute today.
Let’s delete this lunatic on my back. It’s messing up my vibe.
Read widely and voraciously.
Listen to music every day.
Write letters, not emails.
Make a poem.
Live a poem.
Be good.
Do good.
Breathe.
I don’t have anything special to say here. No tips for getting ideas. No knowledge to drop. No zingers. But let me say this and be done with it.
Drifting back into old habits is too easy. We slide down our slippery slopes and back onto the comfy couches of do-nothing with little resistance.
For me, it’s time to piton this slope, hang on, and keep on climbing. Change for me is not to be found in that couch!7
“Don’t they have sun sleeves for cycling,” my dermatologist asks.
The couch calls. I ignore its velvety pleas to plant my old self back into its plump cushion.
“Yes. Yes, they do.”
Whatever. I don’t care. I’m going to make them sexy, and if you don’t think they’re sexy screw you because from this point on I’m just trying to move on through life as painlessly as I can for as long as I can. And if you think those sleeves are sexy, just wait until you see my new wide-brimmed hat!
It’s official: my journey to part eccentric old lady, part sexy sun-safe vampire has now commenced.
On Wednesday, I had a melanoma on my back. Today I don’t8.
Recognize when you get second chances.
Chant your mantras.
Make your changes.
Surround yourself with love.
Oh, and get your skin regularly checked9 for terrorists.
Yours in tiny thought,
Janeen
This week’s amends…
Here is a poem I love, about loving oneself.
LOVE AFTER LOVEby Derek Walcott
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
On Rotation: “Lift” by Radiohead
Here is a song I love, from a band I love. The last three lines. ‘Nuff said.
“Lift”
This is the place
Sit down, you’re safe now
You’ve been stuck in a lift
We’ve been trying to reach you, Thom
This is the place
It won’t hurt ever again
The smell of air conditioning
The fish are belly up
Empty all your pockets
Because it’s time to come home
This is the place
Remember me? I’m the face you always see
You’ve been stuck in a lift
In the belly of a whale at the bottom of the ocean
The smell of air conditioning
The fish are belly up
Empty all your pockets
Because it’s time to come home
The smell of air conditioning
The fish are belly up
Ah, let it go
Today is the first day
Of the rest of your days
So lighten up, squirt
Here is a picture I love, of my brother whom I love and who loves me. (I’m not just projecting. I can tell.)
Do you know who else I love? I mean you know it. Here is Robert Zimmerman punching my melanoma10.
Did any of this spark a tiny thought of your own?
February the 4th, 2022.
Newsflash: You are too.
One of Australia’s most beloved poems, “My Country” by Dorothea Mackellar isn’t about a good sunburn, but rather about her love for Australia. It contains the following stanza (below). I remember singing a song version of it in choir at school.
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror
The wide brown land for me!
Having a purpose is just something we do to give our life meaning. Living with purpose is, I think, harder.
Dermatologists don’t know the star signs of moles. Or if they do know, they don’t tell you.
It’s actually about 7 cm from what I can measure, awkwardly. It’s literally smack-dab in the center of my back between my shoulder blades, so it’s kinda difficult to access with a ruler.
Check the couch for actual change on laundry day. You’d be surprised how many times I’ve found my last quarter there.
I won’t find out for a couple more days if it’s all gone or they need to take more skin.
A dermatologist is the best checker, but here is a link to the ABCDE rules for spotting skin cancer.
This actor is not a melanoma, but you know what I mean.