I’m covered in moles. Even as a child, I had noticeable moles, larger ones than my peers. A huge one uglied the side of my thigh; two large moles, one raised, circled my bellybutton. Dozens of moles spotted my arms. I even had a beauty mark on my mid-cheek, which would fade in the sun (maybe that was just a persistent freckle). I thought little of all my moles, only that they were unsightly blemishes, wishing they would go away.
When my mom was diagnosed with lung cancer at 53 years old, the alarm bells in my head were ready to scream. They were just waiting for a chance to come to life. I never smoked—never even tried it. I dyed my hair, but otherwise, my body was as chemically-free as anyone else on the planet who drinks from water bottles, uses harsh cleaning supplies, and applies makeup and hairspray daily. I rarely even drank alcohol. Because of digestive meltdowns fast food caused my poor tummy, I rarely ate McDonald’s or Burger King (not that I ate healthy otherwise though). I was never prescribed any daily pill for anxiety or depression or other physical ailments. I exercised five days a week (yoga, pilates, or dancing around my living room—which I believe counts as exercise). I loved going for walks, especially when Ginger was still alive, our little sable-colored Pomeranian. I was not overweight, although at various points in my life I could have stood to gain five pounds or lose fifteen. I certainly was not the paragon of health, but all things considered, I wasn’t an unhealthy disaster.
Unless you count the sun.
Something as beautiful as the sun is considered a health hazard. It makes plants grow, and people too—just ask those Dollanganger kids from the attic. We need Vitamin D to feel alive, so I think.
Yet it wrinkles our skin, depletes it of moisture and elasticity, and well, causes cancer.
Maybe people who love to drink question why alcohol destroys the liver.
My moles multiplied as I aged. When I told my family doctor about these moles, she was unconcerned. “That’s normal.” The only one she didn’t like was the large one on my abdomen, a newbie, one that had only existed about ten years. She sent me to the dermatologist, who wasn’t concerned either, only of its size. All the rest of my moles appeared “fine” as I babbled on and on about my mother’s cancer.
I know there’s no connection between lung and skin cancer, but when your maternal genes include cancer that kills before you reach 57, you tend to panic about any carcinogens you willingly subject your body to.
My mom was adopted, but she knew her biological mother. Jean, my biological grandmother, was healthy as a horse they say, until a car accident in her early forties crushed her pelvis. She developed pancreatic cancer and died at 47. Jean was a smoker.
My mom was also healthy as a horse. I can count only three times that I remember my mother sick with a cold. In her early forties, she had a lump removed on her thyroid, which was benign. Then at 53 she fought lung cancer for three years before it killed her just days before she turned 57.
My mole panic seemed completely reasonable to me. After all, I said all the time that if I were to develop cancer, it would be skin cancer.
Perhaps I should have manifested something else, like being a New York Times bestselling author, or a choreographer on So You Think You Can Dance, or the likes of Laura Ingalls Wilder with a television show about my life.
At 46, I had a mole that came back as melanoma.
I feared age had caused the cancer gene to flip on like a switch, that now my body was riddled with little dark brown spots that held cancer in their color.
That mole on my abdomen was the first I had removed, long ago, when my mom was still alive. I should mention my fainting problem with blood and needles and the woozy-like panic that sets in upon entering any medical facility, even if I am not the patient. Because of my mole’s large size, the dermatologist cut it out from my abdomen. I didn’t think I would survive the miniature stabs of Novocain before she started cutting me open, a scar that parallels my C-section scar from five years before. My husband drove me to the appointment, an appointment that ruined my day, and then the aftermath of band aids and stitches and more panic that the mole was cancerous. It was not.
Five years later, I had my second mole removed, this one on my thigh, the one from my childhood that looked so huge on my skinny five-year-old body. It had faded and melded more into my skin. This one, too, had to be cut out. The sides of my legs are sensitive and this dermatologist was gruff. I didn’t think I would survive the procedure. But that mole, too, came back fine.
Ever since, I’ve had yearly skin checks. Almost every appointment includes the PA scraping off at least one mole, sometimes three. I only survive those procedures because they’re quicker than the excising ones. My husband is tired of doing wound care for the first few days—I can’t do it myself until they heal a bit. My medicine cabinet is stocked with band aids and antibiotic ointment before every appointment, for I know not how many moles will get removed, only that odds are good that at least one will. Those moles started coming back mildly atypical, then moderately atypical.
Yet no one knows if these atypical moles hold cancer or not. The questionable cells aren’t revealing their secrets. If left on the skin, maybe they’ll turn malignant, but no one has found out. We grow everything else in petri dishes—why not a mole? I’ve quit asking for reassurance as there is none. I’m even confused as to why some moles are fine and others are not. None of my moles look like broccoli or bleeding or some growth with a life of its own, yet many of them don’t look normal. Why one mole is removed and another is left, only to be removed the next time baffles me, yet no one can give me a reason. It’s random. I want to be able to cover myself in some magical ointment, a lotion that will glow upon finding questionable cells, but instead it’s a yearly guessing game, this mole stays but this mole goes, eeny meeny miny mole.
And then a couple of atypical moles grew back. Those had to be excised, cut out even deeper.
In the fall, when the PA removed a mole from my arm, a mole that used to have a partner, one she had removed the previous year, the mole came back cancerous. It was not comforting to know that it hadn’t spread, that it sat upon the topmost layers of the skin, that they were only cutting deeper as standard procedure, a cautionary measure should any wayward cancerous cell float around waiting to start a party with some friends.
The PA couldn’t answer my questions about the two moles on my arms, if she had taken the second the first time around if it would have been cancerous or not a year ago. She couldn’t answer why she didn’t take it last year, only that it looked fine enough to leave, but to keep watch of it. And then 12 months later, it’s scraped off my arm and found to be cancerous.
Now I have dermatologist appointments every three months. She removed two more moles; the one on my opposite arm came back moderately atypical but no need to cut it out more. The one on my leg still baffles me. It contained cells that mimic cancer, but wasn’t, but they cut it further out so that later it doesn’t confuse doctors into thinking I have cancer when I don’t. Neither the PA nor the doctor could explain that one to make it understandable. And since one on my belly grew back, that one was excised too. Both came back fine.
So far, I’ve had two moles excised, eight moles scraped off, with five of those being further cut out. Four have come back atypical and one was malignant.
I guess I deserve it. No sympathy will be handed out to me when I walk around like Malibu Barbie every summer, when I drive around with the top down like another Malibu Barbie.
I can’t undo it. But would I even if I could? Would sunscreen have kept me safe all those high school years as I tanned on the deck? Would it have protected my aging skin as I read memoir after memoir? I don’t regret my time in the sun for I adore the sun. I regret not wearing sunscreen.
What I lament the most is the upcoming summer, my trepidation about the sun I love to soak up, igniting the cat I must have been in a past life. I can douse myself with sunscreen before I head out the door in my bikini, spray it on after I put my hair up in a bun (as my husband says, “Bun’s up, sun’s out). It’s the convertible that worries me, it’s the time I spend outside eating that worries me, it’s those ten minutes here and five minutes there that I sit in my wicker swing, warming my skin from the air-conditioned house. The daily walks with the dog (although in the heat of the summer, she prefers to stay indoors). I cannot envision a summer—or even a spring—without the sun.
My lifestyle is one that includes the sun, multiple times a day. Without it, I wither into depression, shutting myself up like a tulip in the shade. But with it, well, that could kill me too.