Bullet Hole in My Back

Well, I had my appointment with the dermatologist yesterday and as you may be able to guess from the title of this post, I didn’t get to walk out of there without more bits of my skin going off to pathology.

When I got into the exam room, the assistant asked me if there were any spots of interest they should closely look at. I told them that I had one on my back, on the shoulder blade area that I hadn’t noticed until just a few weeks ago. But it might have been there previously and I just didn’t see it since it’s in a blind spot unless you position yourself just so in the mirror. She looked at it and then left the room. A few minutes later, the doctor came in and said, “what’s with this spot on your back”? I told her that I had just noticed it but it could have been there all along. She got very quiet while she hunched over the spot. And then she started speaking in jargon to her assistant, measuring it, peering at it, and then the iPad was in my face to sign off on another biopsy.

So, I got to flip onto my stomach and get jabbed with the needle for the numbing medication before the doctor came back in to slice it off and stick it into a jar. There was no more joking around. The environment in the room was really thick with tension. The doctor and her assistant went into the nurse station right after but I could still hear murmurs of them talking… “suspicious”, “her arm pain”, and “see if we can expedite”.

(Side note, my arm on that side has been giving me some problems for the last few weeks, to the point that I can’t rotate it behind me – do you have any idea how much you need to do that to put a bra on and take it off? I figured I just aggravated it somehow; but now of course, I’m freaking out that there is something else behind the pain I’ve been experiencing. I have an appointment with an ortho to get it looked at tomorrow – but now I have a bandaid on the shoulder blade of that arm, which I’m sure the ortho is going to ask about – and I have no answer to give him.)

So now, I get to wait on pins and needles for the results to come back. Naturally, my doctor wouldn’t say anything about what she thought it was. And my amygdala gets to run rampant conjuring up worst-case scenarios until I get the results call, which will likely happen while I’m up in Vermont next week… cross your fingers for me to get good news.