Melanoma 2 years on: having blood drawn and cracking your head open

It was a little over two years ago that I was diagnosed with Melanoma and went in for treatment. Since then I’ve shunned the sun, have gotten used to clothing with a high SPF, love my hats and saw our Oncologist once a quarter. This past week marked the last time that I needed to see him once a quarter. Now the visits go down to twice a year and then once a year for a couple of years and then, hopefully never again.

This past visit we took the boys. I figured that it would be good for them to see that daddy has to go to the doctor too.  They’ve been to Doctor Lee a couple of other times and immediately remembered the exit. Our oldest tried to calm any nervous tension by saying, “oh, I remember this place”, as we got off of the exit.

As we approached the parking lot I started talking to them about this particular visit. While it was in the same office as Doctor Lee, we were going to see his friends that work on the third floor.  I explained to them that in this particular office they ran tests on people and today they were going to draw some blood.

“So they’re going to crack open your head”, he said.

“No, what do you mean?” I asked.

“If they’re going to look at your blood then they’ll crack open your head and get some?”

“No, it’s a little more precise than that.” I assured him.

Part of me was happy that I was calm about getting blood drawn. When I was a child I was a wreck about needles. My mother would try the opposite approach in trying to quell any hesitancy by telling that when she was a little girl they had to stick a needle THIS long into her leg to draw marrow for some reason.  Not surprisingly, her pep talk did not endear me to doctors, needles or speaking to my parents.

However, when we went into the room the boys settled down with their tablets. I started to tell them what the nurse was about to do, but their heads were already down, looking at pictures or mal adjusted birds that teach physics.

When she was done I started to tell them about the tests that they’d do to the blood. Before I could get into the second sentence Charlie came up and gave the nurse a hug. He’s a hugger. “Mine is a hugger too”, she said as we walked out the door.

“Can we get ice cream now”, Jake asked as we went to the elevator. I had promised the boys some ice cream if they were good during the doctor visit. Once we got to the store it graduated from just ice cream to pizza and ice cream, but the boys didn’t seem to mind.

This week E! news correspondent Melanie Broomley announced that she had, what sounds like, the same thing that I had. She was never a sun bum, but did remember getting sun burned once or twice as a child. When she was an adult she noticed that her mole was changing into a not-so pretty clumpy mass, just like us.

Visit your dermatologist. Put the sunscreen, hats and SPF clothing on the kids. While it’s great to get pizza and ice cream with the kids, it’s best to not make that a celebrating point of being Melanoma free.