The Day o' the Doctors

Yesterday, that is.

I FINALLY made an appointment with the dermatologist in my other doctor's building (that would be Rick), made it for the same day as my next visit there, and took the whole day off because I expected to be Very Stressed Out. The dentist, no big deal -- more than once I've taken off a couple of hours for a root canal or extraction and gone right back to work. No problemo! Except for the numbness! And in the case of an extraction, the bleeding, of course. But no emotional trauma.

The dermatologist (Kurtis, as it turns out) ... I expected him to gasp and start ordering treatments across the way at the hospital, because there's stuff growing all over the place. I've been reassuring myself that because I can date the first notice of most of these things to back in Castle Rock (3+ years ago) or Mesa (9+ years ago) or even in a couple of cases, New Jersey (13+ years ago) they must not be important. If they haven't done a lot since then except sit and attract my concern on a daily basis, then that's okay, right? But The Little Voice just would not shut up about them.

I got a whole lotta sun as a teenager. We had a pool and I was in it pretty much daily (yes, I can swim) for the better part of the year and when I wasn't actually in the water I was stretched out in a chair beside the water, reading and trying to make my fair skin dark. Lots of sunburns. I got one that was so bad, the tops of my thighs were burned so deep, that I missed three days of school because I couldn't walk. As I recall, I was reading The Once and Future King (still a favorite! I read it aloud to David 2 or 3 years ago) and time just flew. Well, I didn't spend entire afternoons sitting in the sun in one position after that, I can tell you, but I've got all kinds of obvious skin damage from that experience. And little flakey places on my forehead and nose and just above my mouth, and then there has been this red spot on my left arm with two little flakes in it, which is more or less obvious on different days and sometimes itches ... but hey, it's been there since Castle Rock!

Then about a month ago one much like it appeared on my right arm, and *that* one contributed to my melt-down a couple of weeks back. Because it was new. Suddenly one morning I was sure I was going to die young (yeah, I consider 60 too young to die) and I was sure I had cancer and I miss my kids and there's nowhere we can go to be around all of them even after we retire (assuming I live that long) and it had been overcast here for three weeks and on and on and on .... I'm sobbing on the bed and David is fretting and asking if I would like him to take the day off, and yes, I would, but since I couldn't take it off, as well, that really wouldn't help much. So I sent him off and we did lots of email all day and at some point I finally called Kurtis. Or his office, anyhow.

And I made the appointment on the same day that I was going to go have Rick tell me I need insulin because I figured it was better to ruin one day than two. David took the day off, also, and also had one appointment, so we were All About the Doctors yesterday.

So, indeed, I have a bunch of what he called pre-cancerous growths, and the two on my arms are not as scary as they look. But it was a good thing I came in *early.* I'm sure he says that to everyone, but it sounded nice anyway. He sprayed everything (ten spots on my face and the two on my arms) with liquid nitrogen. There's another spot on my back that is a bit more worrisome and he scraped that one to send to the lab, but assured me I don't need to worry about any of them, they're all treatable, and come back in October to have everything frozen again. Should take two or three more visits.

I felt better.

Then I went to see Rick in the afternoon, and he spent a long time going over my labs with me and listening to how things are and are not going. Everyone should have a doctor like this. I never have to wait long and he listens and he works with me to make my treatment as much the way I want it as he can. He's very supportive of alternative as well as allopathic treatments, too, so I'm not sneaking herbs behind his back. :o) We had a long talk about insulin and the 24-hour dose does sound like a good idea, soon, but maybe not quite *yet.* We decided to switch me to a different med in the meantime and also to find a source of berberine. That's in goldenseal, but goldenseal is endangered. It's also in Oregon Grape Root, which is easy to find. And it's in Bitter Melon, which is a Chinese remedy and may, he thought, be harder to get -- but hey, this is San Francisco. He gave me a dvd on 24-hour insulin to watch (we watched it last night along with Obama's acceptance speech, which we missed last week) and we found some Bitter Melon at an herb shop over in the Mission District, where we were headed anyhow. So I'm beginning a 3 week experiment with all the new stuff tomorrow.

Now I feel *much* better.

Consider this a cautionary tale, you fair-skinned folk with fair-skinned children, and watch out for that sun. But you already knew that.