Everyday Stranger

I Got Them In a Knife Fight

Four years ago, I went to an outdoor concert in Raleigh, North Carolina. I sat outside in the warm summer sun in a backless shirt, relaxing on a blanket with some friends. One of them came up behind me and looked at my back.

"Damn, H!" she whistled. "You need to go to a dermatologist! That does NOT look right!"

I couldn't see what she was referring to, so she got out a pocket mirror. There, on the bottom of my right shoulder, was an inky black mark the size of a pencil eraser, only one side of it was a little bit crooked.

I had never seen it before.

One week later, I was in a dermatologist's office.

I was given a paper gown, and told to remove all of my clothing and wear only the gown. I sat on the cold vinyl of the dressing table, my bottom on the paper mat, the smell of alcohol in the air, and I waited in nervous trepidation. The seconds hand on the clock was deafening as it ticked off the time.

The doctor came in shortly and shook my hand. He introduced himself as Dr. Nash, and my guess was (based on his gorgeous creamy caramel coloring and very kind, dark brown eyes) that he was of Indian descent. He put me at ease right away and had me lay down on my stomach to inspect my back.

He opened the back of the gown and immediately said "Helen, I am really sorry to have to tell you this, but this is actually quite serious and needs immediate removal. You have at least three spots on your back that look to be pretty serious."

I took a deep breath, and nodded, feeling the paper on the table crinkle beneath me.

"I mean, they have to come off today. And they will need to be analyzed in the lab before we know if you have to come back again."

I nodded again. He went out and got a nurse, and together they prepped a tray for removal. First, I had to be photographed from almost every angle. These pictures would be used as reference points for any further patches that would appear. As I stood in front of a white sheet, I felt very, very small and extremely vulnerable. The nurse seemed to recognize this.

"Do you have anyone we can call?" she asked, squeezing my shoulder.

"Nope." I replied softly. "I am alone here."

Because I was.

And then I lay down on the table while they removed patches of my skin. I lay, a sheet draped around me, as the doctor carefully stuck my back with burning anesthetic and then stitched up. Occasionally I would feel a cold trickle places, and realized that it was my blood running down my sides, which the nurse hastily retrieved. Dr. Nash talked soothingly to me the entire time. He told me that the spots removed from my back would be scars, possibly large ones. He bandaged me up, and I actually felt ok, like there was no pain.

If tests proved that these spots were cancerous, that he may need to go back in to remove more. In all, he removed 4 moles and I got over 20 stitches.

And he did need to. Within a week I was back. Two of the moles proved to be cancerous.

It appeared that they had not gotten all of the cancer, and so more “scooping”, as I started to call it, was required around the sites that they had been. This time, I received over 20 stitches in one former site and 8 internal stitches in another one, which looked perfectly as though a cigar had been burned into my back. I arose, sore and bandaged, feeling a spot of blood trickle down my back. I was grateful I had chosen to wear black, however, this time my shoulders ached and nagged at me, aching in some deep way that not even a super powered aspirin could cure.

Doctor Nash smiled at me. “You feeling OK?”

“Oh, yeah.” I replied. And I did feel OK, other than a little soreness.

“I’m sorry about the scarring that it will leave.” He said, and smiled ruefully.

“No worries.” I replied, picking up my purse from the chair beside the door. “I will just have to tell the design houses that I am only to model clothes with backs on them." Oddly enough, I felt my face burning and my eyes hot with anger.

He looked at me and took my hand in his own. He looked kindly at my face.

"Helen," he said softly. "You are beautiful outside, but more importantly, you are more beautiful on the inside. These scars...well, they're marks. Big ones. But sometimes, it's impossible to hide something inside based on some white marks on the outside. You have something inside of you, an inner beauty, that most people never find."

He made me cry. I didn't feel in the slightest that he was inappropriate or over-stepping his lines. He was trying to tell me something I had never believed, that beauty really is only skin deep. That these scars that I bear would only be reminders of yet another chapter in the Book of Helen, an experience that I would survive and grow from.

I never saw Dr. Nash again, although he gave me a confidence I never knew I had. I am not beautiful, maybe I am just average. But for one second, this doctor believed in me.

I have had several more removals of spots here in Sweden, but it appears to have disappeared now. I have some nice-sized scars, and when I get asked about them, I laugh and tell people I got them in a knife fight. I got them pushing an old lady out of the way of a speeding car. I survived a shark attack. I can laugh about them and go about my life.

I owe it all to a kind doctor that held my hand and told me I was beautiful. He changed my life and my way of thinking, and for that, I will always owe him.

-H.

Some big changes are coming in my life.

Posted by Everydaystranger at November 1, 2003 01:10 PM | TrackBack