Have you ever faced death?

A number of people I know have faced death in recent years. They’ve either watched someone die or been threatened themselves. I think whether they win or lose is immaterial, and what matters is not knowing. I say that each day we wake up, we’re each one day closer to death. That’s obvious, but if we knew our expiration date, would we make different choices. By all means, I think we would. The problem is balancing the selfish instinct to blow one’s wad if we have a month left with those of a more rationale self to save for a rainy day.

Well, 2009 hasn’t exactly been my year. (And, we’re only two months into it?!?!) One of my moms died in my arms twice. It was an ugly scenario, and you can read all of the horrible details, if you desire, on my previous post.

In addition, my grandfather’s lost a toe and may have some bone disease. I’ve been driving up to Butler, PA to accompany him nearly every week to a couple of different hospitals to meet with various doctors and back to either his assisted living facility or to a nursing facility that administers his intravenous drugs. I wasn’t too worried until I looked up one of the drugs he’s on - Vancomycin. As you know, everything on the Internet is fact, and it says that this stuff is a last resort antibiotic and should be given no more than 10Mg/minute. Well, he’s got 1250 Mg/90 minutes every day for 14 days. At 33% higher than the maximum dosage, that sounds fairly toxic to me. I’ll know more on Wednesday when we go to his Infectious Disease appointment in Pittsburgh.

And, to make matters worse, I’ve been trying to get a dermatology appointment for ever! I’d take the earliest appointment I could, a month and a half out. Then, I’d reschedule another month and a half out, because I was in Butler with grandpa. Well, I finally missed one of grandpa’s appointments to make my own and met with a dermatologist in MD on February 23rd. She kind of thought I was nuts when I said that I’d had skin cancer removed every 6 months previously, but she listened then looked. I wouldn’t have bothered with the appointment, except that I had a strange looking dark spot on my back that was really bothering me. Well, it bothered her too, so she biopsied it with another mole on my arm that I’d had biopsied about 7 years ago. Oh well, another scar.

I get a call on Friday morning saying that the one on my arm was an abnormal mole; oh well. The one on my back though, was a 0.9 mm melanoma. MY FIRST! While firsts can be good a lot of the time, this isn’t one of those times. I don’t mind getting basal cells or squamous cells. Seriously, they’re irritating; melanoma kills. The doctor schedules me for surgery on the next business day. I like the priority I’m given, but I don’t quite understand the urgency. No worries. I get home and look up what I can online. I see that a 0.9 mm melanoma is Stage 0 and think the surgeon must be bored to be dealing with me.

I get to my appointment today, and the doctor comes in. He’s a straight up Indian dude and asks why I’m there. I tell him that I’m not sure, because it seems like I’m covered, but the dermatologist wants to cut more. He explains that he’s going to cut out more from my arm, because they’re concerned that I may have Dysplastic Nevi. A WHAT? Well, it seems that some folks with a bunch of dark and irregular looking moles develop melanoma in nearly all of them over time. Oh Dear! So, the irregular mole removed may in fact have trace amounts of melanoma in it, and they want to dig deep to test the whole thing and rule it out.

Fine, what about the one on my back? Well, it’s more complicated. While I thought the melanoma was 0.9 mm deep, the fact is that the dermatologist only cut off 0.9 mm. This entirely changes my assessment. I think we’re looking at Stage III now, because he’s planning a sentinel lymph node biopsy. Basically, he’s going to remove and biopsy the lymph node that filters the area of the back when he takes all of the melanoma. No worries; we have way more than we need, but if the lymph node’s been compromised, they all go. I’m a little shaken by the whole thing, and I find myself considering a life in South America where I can hire someone to wait on me for the rest of my life, no matter how long I live.

Seriously; Life’s Too Short!