I’ve skipped two blog entries.  Why?  I was in the throes of a full-on-nervous-break-down-week-long-panic-attack.  Yep.  I was losing it, nut-job style.  Nope, not so funny.

I’m a good girl about going yearly to applicable doctors like for pap smear time (eek), teeth scraping, and even the dermatologist.   I expect that these skilled professionals will do the hard work for me if something in my bod is off kilter.  I take decent care of myself- drink lots of liquids (coffee counts, right?), eat mostly vegetarian, slather on sunscreen, exercise, floss… Wow, exhausting.  And I thought I knew about stuff to hunt for like breast lumps, bulls-eye-bites, and other scaryish things that warrant a run to the doc’s.  But, there’s one thing I didn’t take that seriously. I’ve never been one parade naked in front of the mirror to look for new or changing spots.  I thought skin cancer was a frou-frou kind of cancer.  The kind they just scrape off and boot ya out the door with a stern warning to wear a floppy hat.

A few months ago or more, time slides by in our crazy lives, Keith pointed out a mole on my back that he thought looked “weird.”  He said “Was that always there?”   I ignored him as usual and went back to scrubbing the baby’s stinky feet.  Then, some more days/weeks/months dissolved into Keith saying, “I really think you need to get that checked out.”  Here’s the clincher.  Keith sounded worried, and that’s not Keith.  It suddenly hit me like an overfilled laundry basket to the head, this mole thing might be bad.  I forced Keith to take a few (or more) close-ups of the culprit, which was a hideous puffy reddish thing the size of a pencil eraser.  A growth I never remember being there and didn’t look like other things on my body (as the internet calls it, the ugly duckling).  This situation called for an investigation.  I required an authority on such matters who was available on a Friday night.  I needed Google.  Every single site I gobbled up told me I was a perfect candidate for Melanoma.  I am fair, blue eyed, and gasp, I relished tanning beds in college.  I have more than fifty moles on my body (a human connect-the-dots), and here’s what totally freaked me out.  Every site screamed at me: a growth shouldn’t be changing rapidly in size, color, and/or elevation, and if it was, it warranted an immediate trip to the doctor.  Oops… this growth seemed to fit all that criteria, but I had elected to disregard it….

Saturday, Keith took the kids on a Father’s Day camping trip (sucker!), which should have meant FREEDOM!  Just my sidekick Juliette and I partying it up at Wegmans, folding laundry together, laughing at Catfish.  But…. instead, without Keith and the kids’ whining as a distraction, I went balls-to-the- wall on the internet searching everything I could find about this hideous mole.  I WebMDed my heart out while shoveling cereal into Juliette’s mouth, while stomping on the treadmill, while pairing stray socks (darn those pesky stack of loners), and, oh boy, did I rapidly arrive in crazytown.

All I could find was beyond horrifying.  Over and over I compared the photo Keith had taken to the Melanoma images on the computer, and beyond any doubt, it was a match.   By 6pm Saturday, I had not eaten, I couldn’t even guzzle down one glass of wine, and I was freaking the double bleep out.  Keith thought about coming home from his camping trip to tranquilize me, but the kids were having such a blast I convinced him to stay.  Really, it gave me more time to Google with gusto.  My mind was doing laps and my heart was busting open with sadness and fear..  My three babies needed me.  They couldn’t grow up without a mamma.  I, with the eager help of Google, gave myself a death sentence.  I watched my beautiful life rushing down the drain quickly and painfully.

I phoned the on-call doctor at the dermatologist’s office.  Though she was kind and understanding, she couldn’t assuage my fears.  To humor me, she allowed me to send her a photo of the growth via text, but was unable to tell me anything to back me off my ledge.  Hearing the complete and utter panic in my voice, she told me to “come in first thing on Monday without an appointment.”  And although that should have been good, I immediately thought, oh no!  She thinks I need to come in first thing on Monday.  BAD.

This left the dregs of Saturday and the rest of Sunday to survive until the appointment.  Though I tried to stop, I couldn’t control myself and spent the rest of Saturday evening Googling up every single story I could find about Melanoma and exacerbating my panic.   I stayed up until 2am then woke again by 5am to get back to my so-called pal, the internet.  I called my mom in freak out mode as well, and sensing my desperation, she drove up to help with the kids and to try to jar me out of my tailspin (love ya for that, mom).  Though both Keith and mom tried, I waded through Sunday in a fog.  Someone else, fueled by the two-faced internet, was piloting me.  I helped tend to the kids, but my mind was on repeat over and over and over again.  I am dying of cancer.

After another sleepless night of dread, I went to my appointment Monday morning.  My sweet friend came with me, and I am so grateful I accepted the offer I was initially tempted to refuse because I didn’t want to inconvenience her.  She held my hand throughout the appointment and listened to what the nurse practitioner was sharing.  Upon initial inspection, the NP said she thought the growth was an atypical mole with two colors in it. She said if she saw it on her body, she wouldn’t be “concerned.”  But here’s the thing, she was “concerned” enough to biopsy it, and she couldn’t say “for sure” until the results came back in two weeks.  Hold up… TWO WEEKS???  I would be committed to an institution by then.  I tearfully begged her to rush the results, she took pity on me, and promised me an answer within a week. What I had wanted was a HELL NO you don’t have cancer, so I could run along on my merry way.  Though the odds were promising, the hole in my gut continued to spread.

Although the NP seemed pretty positive about it, my mind continued to screw with me.  She is young and doesn’t know what Melanoma looks like, she is not a doctor, she doesn’t know how fast it grew and changed, and it still looks and sounds like Melanoma as per Google.  So many of the stories I poured over online were people who had to convince their unconcerned doctors to biopsy their growths, so they were shocked when they received the dreaded phone call.  And, so many of these stories were shared by people who were not in the early stages of the disease. By the time they caught it, the disease had progressed into their nodes, were violating their bodies, and many had cancer that had infected their vital organs.  The prognosis was bad.  The worst kind of bad.

The week of waiting was a spiral of anxiety, but I was lucky to have friends and family supporting me along the way.   I vowed to stay off Google because I knew it was making me psycho, and though I relapsed a few times, I stopped investing hours.  Keith likes to say, “why worry about things we can’t control,” and I wish I could bottle that sentiment up and chug it like a shot of tequila, but I am no Keith.  I am an anxious, obsessive worrier, and all I could do was try my best to cope with the worry that was smothering me like a down comforter.  After two calls to the doctor to try to wrestle them for my results, I elicited an answer.  After putting me on hold for a heart-racing ten minutes, a nurse proclaimed the growth was benign.  WHATTTT????  Talk about emotional overhaul!  I sobbed for a good ten minutes out of gratitude.

Here’s the amazing thing about the dreadful mole.  This mole placed things in perspective within minutes.  Though I gripe about my chaotic life, I would embrace wiping dirty butts, snot noses, and juice spills a billion times over dealing with a serious illness.  Though I was shaken up like a margarita, it made me incredibly thankful.  When I plummeted into the depths of despair and ruminated over the worst, it brought forth every ounce of love I have for my husband and children. I also learned I am lucky to have people I can count on, and it is very okay to ask for and accept help.  Accepting help does not make me weak; it means I know my limitations.  I am also grateful I didn’t bottle up all my fear, and instead, told my support system I was terrified.  Being afraid does not make me a freak or overly sensitive, it makes me capable of being comforted.  And finally, though it is a luxury to have every answer at my finger tips, it can be incredibly unhealthy (duh, right???).   Google, we are breaking up.

Thank you ugly mole from hell for driving me to the brink of insanity, then yanking me back by the scruff of my neck to rub my face in what really matters.  Messy hair, mismatched clothing, extra carbs, mounds of laundry… bring it on!