I Lost a Freckle

One single piece of information can make the biggest difference on how a day/week turns out.

While I was at a doctor’s office several weeks ago, I asked the doctor to take a look at a Certain Freckle on my leg that I’d been noticing now for several years. The color of The Freckle was just a tad different than the other million or so that I have, as well as being slightly raised. It looked fairly normal but Fair Skin + Sun = Not So Good Combination, and I’m not overly religious in the Sunscreen Department.

So I asked Dr. N to check it out, just for safety’s sake. He put on his magnifying glasses and peered closely at it. “Hmm,” he said, “it’s not really jumping out at me as being very unusual. We could take it off relatively painlessly, but it doesn’t really look like something to be overly concerned about.” I asked him whether I needed to keep an eye on it or was it just a slightly different looking Freckle to just ignore. “Well,” he said, “I tell you what. Why don’t you lie back on the table for a minute? Sometimes these things look a little different in a different light or position.”

I obligingly turned myself ninety degrees and reclined on the table. He once more bent over my leg, peering at The Freckle. “Nah, it doesn’t really look like…you know, I think that we’ll just go ahead and take it off just in case,” he said reaching for the syringe of anesthetic that, for some mysterious reason, the nurse was already handing to him. He took it and was nearly injecting it in my leg when he said, “That’s okay, isn’t it?”

“Um, I guess?” I said, somewhat in a state of shock. My mind was reeling. It was shouting, “Wait! I haven’t had time to prepare for this. You know that I pass out easily! Does this mean I might have cancer? You’re doing WHAT??” All of these thoughts ran through my mind in a split second. I felt the prick of the needle and a few seconds later the doctor pulled his gloves off. I figured he would probably go do something else while waiting for the site to get numb.

He told the nurse to put something on the site and said that he’d see me back in the office in a month or so. It was then that I realized that he had already removed The Freckle and was off to see other patients. “But wait!” I thought, “I haven’t had time to finish freaking out. And he’s done? He doesn’t even know that I pass out easily.” I pulled myself into a sitting position and looked at my leg. Sure enough, what had been a Freckle moments before was now a shallow crater about as big around as a pea. The only thing that I had felt was the prick of the needle.

I personally think that his “not jumping out at me/I’ll take it off after all” routine was nothing more than a ploy. His nurse was all too ready with the supplies; I was all too relaxed. If it was a ploy, it worked. If I had gone there knowing that he was planning to remove The Freckle, I’d have worked myself into a freaked-out, nail-biting frenzy that wouldn’t have been a pretty thing to behold. Anticipation is the worst part of something like that.

The nurse put on some ointment and a Band-Aid, then handed me a paper with “What to Do After Surgery” on the top of it. She told me to call back in about a week to get the results of my biopsy. She gathered up a bunch of free samples for me and told me that she’d bring my chart to the front desk in a moment.

As I gathered my things, I wondered if I’d make it to the front desk only to keel over while waiting to pay and make a wonderfully huge scene in the process. The only one of my usual warning signs that I detected was the occasional heart thump that is usually a series of heart thumps. “Maybe I can do this,” I thought. I made my way to the front, lecturing myself the whole way on how “this isn’t a big deal and there’s no need to make a big scene—other people don’t.” I figured surely I could make it to the car, and then if I wanted to have an Episode, I could at least do it in the privacy of the parking lot.

I did, indeed, make it to the car. There was a continual pep talk running through my head. As I was leaving the parking lot, my leg began to protest mildly. I turned up my music, thought of other things, and tried to keep my mind occupied. I went to Office Depot to ship something, then wandered around the store trying to distract myself. I mean, there’s nothing like office supplies to take a person’s mind off their troubles, right? My heart was still doing the occasional thump but I was pretty sure I’d made it through the Danger Zone.

I called the Doctor’s office a week later, but no lab results were in. I called the next day and the next day, but no results. On the third day, they told me to wait to call until the following Monday since the lab was behind. I wasn’t too thrilled at being put off. I didn’t really think that it could be cancerous because “it won’t happen to me.” On the other hand, all those people that you hear about that have cancer are also “me”s, so obviously it’s happening to someone.

I called this past Monday and “the lab results are normal.” It was just a mole. Praise the Lord!

Now all I’m left with is a scab that I’m tempted to pick off (even though it is still firmly attached), an itchy spot on my leg as it continues to heal, and a very relieved heart.

Yeah, this could have been a bad week.

I wonder if the freckle will return when it heals…