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Tuesday, December 29, 2020

This Could Have Had A Very Different Ending or What I Have In Common with Bob Marley.

I wouldn't consider myself high maintenance when it comes to my appearance.   A dab of eyeliner and a quick swipe of lipstick, and I am usually good to go.  It has been at least three years since I have had my nails done, but I do enjoy a good pedicure.  

Sometime in early 2020 I noticed a shadow at the edge of my thumbnail but assumed that I bumped it and it would go away.  I kept noticing that it was there and getting a bit bigger, but didn't want to go anywhere near the doctor as I didn't want to get Covid.  I was an early adopter of social distancing and wearing a mask, and once I discovered the joy of ordering groceries online, there was really no need for me to go anywhere.  

For the next few months I was happy living in my cocoon.  The weather was nice, and I would work and relax on my back porch where there was a quiet peace.  Ryan decided that he was done with baseball so we were able to relax for the first time in six years.  There was no running around from one game to another.  Life was quite good.  

My sister and I often have lunch together.  We would eat in my car and catch up on life.  In early October we were enjoying an unseasonably warm day when I mentioned that I had this line on my fingernail, and I wondered why it wouldn't go away.  Of course Ann said "you should really get that checked."  We joked about how it would be just my luck to be the first person we knew to have fingernail cancer.  

I kept putting off going to the doctor because my doctor that I had for 30+ years had retired.  We were in the middle of a pandemic, and I didn't want to bother my new doctor that I hadn't even met with a line on my fingernail.  I finally called and made the appointment.  I went in and introduced myself and told her how embarrassed I was to be bothering her with such a stupid thing.  We talked for a bit and she said that she thought it wasn't anything but that I should see a dermatologist.  

Here is where I should have seen the first red flag.  She had me set up with a dermatologist within 3 days.  Not thinking anything about it, I went in and again explained how embarrassed I was to be bothering them with a line on my fingernail.  She looked at it and said that she thought it was a mole under my fingernail and since 49 year old white people don't usually have moles under their fingernails,  I should really get a biopsy.  Oh, and was I free that afternoon as the doctor happened to be in the office and had some time to do it.  This should have been my second red flag.  I thought, oh, how convenient that I could get this over with.  

I went back that afternoon and we shall not talk about what they did, but suffice it to say, they had to take the sample by the base of my nail and not the tip.  Here is where I missed red flag number 3.  On the way out of the room, the doctor said that my next stop would be a hand surgeon.  I took that to mean that if this was bad my next stop would be a hand surgeon.  

I waited a week and hadn't heard anything back so I assumed that everything was fine and I got my thumb mutilated for no reason.  I was ready to put the whole thing behind me.  Dave can be relentless so he made me call on Friday to get the results.  When I called, the girl that answered the phone said she would look up my chart.  There was an awkward pause and she put me on hold.  She came back and she said that they weren't back yet and someone would call me on Monday.  I did get an uneasy feeling about it, but Max, my dog, was really sick and I put it out of my head thinking that I didn't want to borrow trouble.  That was red flag number 4.  I chose to ignore that one.  

Monday rolls around and I get a call from the nurse at the dermatologist who tells me that what I had was in fact melanoma and she was scheduling an appointment with the hand surgeon.  Leave it to me to get fingernail cancer.  The good news was that it wasn't deep and should be easily removed.  We talked about how long it might take to grow my nail back, and then hung up.  

I went to see the surgeon and he came in the room and told me that I wasn't going to like what he had to tell me.  I was expecting him to tell me that he was going to take my fingernail off and that it might not grow back flat.  What he really told me was that he was going to remove the entire nail bed and that my nail wouldn't grow back at all.  If it went really deep, he might have to remove my thumb to the first knuckle.  I didn't miss that red flag.  I appreciated how up front he was and asked if they were going to do it before the end of the year as I had met our deductible.  He looked at me like I was crazy and said that this wasn't something we should mess around with and we would do it next week.  At this point I fully understood what was going on.    

Before I knew it, I was getting surgery that required a skin graft, twilight sedation and a nerve block.  That was way more than I bargained for.  Because I like to do things all the way, we had to do it twice because they didn't get clean margins the first time.    

It turns out that this is the kind of cancer that killed Bob Marley.  (I know you all thought we had the same sense of rhythm.) His was on his big toe and because he was Jamaican, it was not as noticeable as it was on me.  I was incredibly lucky that I didn't wait any longer.  

Here are some of the lessons I learned from this experience:

1.  I need to be my own health advocate.  There is really nothing too insignificant to share with your doctor if something is changing.  There was no need to be embarrassed or to feel like I was wasting someone's time.  

2.  This type of melanoma comes from a previous injury and not sun exposure.  I had previously cut this thumb twice that both times required stitches.  This is proof positive that, out of an abundance of caution,  I should just stop cooking,  

3.  I have surrounded myself with amazing people that bent over backwards to take care of me and my family.  My mom is a Rockstar!

4.  In reality, this was a painful inconvenience.  I was so very lucky that this didn't go very, very wrong.  



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