My skin cancer story

So obviously, I need to start with an introduction. Hi, I’m Nicole and I have skin cancer. It sounds weird to say out loud and it’s even weirder typing it. I mean, I’m the one that the dermatologists say is not ready for Botox yet. I use SPF 30 everyday and SPF 50 if I know I’m going to be outside for a while. I’m the freaking poster child for doing everything you’re supposed to do to protect yourself – you know, except for those years in my teens trying to get the perfect tan, something that my fair Irish ancestry complexion refused to get on board with…

By now, you’re probably wondering about the name of this blog. Let me tell you the story…

I currently live in Austin, Texas. I love that I ended up here. The town is amazing – great restaurants, kick-ass music scene, vibrant energy, and homegrown arts community. (Please just don’t move here if you don’t already live here. The traffic is beyond horrible…) I moved up here from San Antonio at the beginning of the year for a new job opportunity and one day while in the bathroom of my new apartment, I noticed a weird pink spot on my knee. Since I have psoriasis, I assumed that it might be migrating to my legs. I kept an eye on it, looked at pictures of moles online just in case – but my spot didn’t look like any of the “bad” ones. It really didn’t even look like a mole. So I put it out of my mind, although I got frustrated that my ointments and lotions didn’t seem to make a difference.

Then this past September, with my marriage on the rocks, I decided that I needed to go to the dermatologist. I mean, I wasn’t getting any younger, and I thought maybe I could at least clear up my psoriasis if there was a possibility that I might have to be thrown back into the dating scene. Vanity, it turns out, is a great motivator for getting you off your ass to take care of yourself. I had to wait three weeks to be seen as a new patient, but in the beginning of October, I headed off to see my new doctor.

She prescribed some great medication and by my follow-up in November – right before Thanksgiving – my psoriasis had really started to clear up. Except for that spot on my knee. It didn’t budge. My doctor was doing the full skin check and asked me about it. Did it itch? No. Did it ever bleed? No. Did it give me any problems? No, except it was kinda visible when I wore dresses and skirts and I thought it was a little ugly. She chuckled and asked it I wanted it removed. Yes please! She got her assistant to numb my leg up and sliced it off. Almost as an afterthought, she mentioned that she would send it to be biopsied – just in case.

On a Wednesday in the first week of December, while I was working late and on the phone with my boss, I got a voicemail from my new dermatologist. She said that she would call me back later that evening. Well, damn, it was already 6:30 p.m. This can’t be good. And then, while I was trying to figure out how to sneak a giant box of shoes I had ordered online into my condo and past my husband (shoes are another great way to keep your spirits up during times of marital strife but it does present challenges if you’re trying to keep your shopping on the down low), I got the return call. The first thing she asked me was if I was home yet. Since I was standing in front of my building’s door person, I asked if she could wait a minute. Then she had to wait while I rode the elevator up to my floor. I hadn’t even gotten my key in the front door before she told me the results of the biopsy came back – and it was melanoma.

What? My spot was pink! It wasn’t dark, it wasn’t asymmetrical, it had clearly defined borders. It didn’t look like any melanoma I had ever seen. As it turns out, it didn’t look like any melanoma she had seen either.

Her voice shook a little as she talked with me. She told me that she had them redo the testing on the tissue to make sure – positive that there was a mistake. There was no mistake. I was one of the rare, unlucky few who presented with amelanotic nodular melanoma.

Suddenly, there was discussion of excising the rest of the lesion in two days. In my numbed state, I told her that I had to wait nearly three weeks to schedule it because I needed to go out of town for work. It’s funny, you get told you have a potentially very serious thing to deal with and your mind immediately goes to the mundane “I can’t cancel my business trip, I have a ton of things to do…” She paused. Because of the location of the spot, on my inner knee, I would need to severely restrict my mobility to let the scar heal correctly. Um, have you ever tried to get around San Francisco without some type of walking? Besides, I was going to Napa while I was there. How can I not walk to get into the wineries for tastings? And God knows, now I really wanted to be drinking some wine…

In the end, we opted for a surgery date after I returned from my trip – and right before Christmas… I walked around for the next few weeks, looking at that spot on my knee constantly, looking at my pink melanoma…