I convinced him
I finally convinced Kris to go to a dermatologist to have various spots on his body checked out. by convincing, I mean, I made a doctor appointment for him, reminded him about it, woke him up in the morning, and went to the appointment with him. He had a couple spot on his chest and one on his back that I was a bit concerned about, so I went to point them out to the doctor. Doyle and Mike suggested I circle the suspious spots in permanent marker, add a note, and send Kris to the doctor by himself, so that I could save time. I ignored them.
We arrived at 9:05 am, five minutes late for his appointment, only to discover that his appointment was at 9:30 am. D'oh. "I could have slept another thirty minutes, Kris complained. Yeah, yeah.
The doctor looked all over Kris, at his various moles and freckles, from his hair to his feet, before she asked which spots I was concerned about. I pointed them out, one at a time: one she said was scar tissue, one was a cyst, and one was just a large freckle-mole with hairs growing out of it. She expressed concern about a particular mole on his thigh, but it was one that was there for as long as I've been seeing Kris naked, so she wasn't concerned much.
When she left, I commented to Kris that I really didn't believe her, that I wanted to take pictures of the spots for later comparison, and maybe have them removed, just in case. He was a little surprised and asked why I didn't believe her. "Because the dermatologist who originally looked at mine told me it was just a skin tag."
Just a skin tag.
I went in to have the spot next to my eye, which was growing slowly, and annoyed me. She told me it was just a skin tag, and that I would probably have to pay for its removal out of pocket. She said the removal would include a biopsy, and my insurance company probably wouldn't pay for that either, was I really sure I wanted to have it removed?
I'm a huge fan of fixing things that bother me. I paid for orthodontia when I was 29, to have braces for the second time in my life, because one tooth was out of place.
One tooth.
No one could see the out-of-place tooth, but I could feel it and it bothered me. So, I had it fixed. Same thing with this skin tag. It bothered me. It hurt when I pressed on it. I thought it was a wart next to my eye, caused by rubbing my eyes after dealing with a wart on my foot years ago. Reasonable thinking? Probably not. But the supposed skin tag annoyed me, and I wanted it gone.
Two weeks later, I was receiving voice mail messages from my doctor, would I please call her back. I called her back, sat down, and found out I had skin cancer. A small localized tumour, but because of the location, I needed surgery to have it removed.
Insurance ended up covering the removal of that "skin tag," and I became suspicious of every bump on my body. And Kris'.
Given the initial mis-diagnosis of my growth (I need to give it a name so that I can refer to it more easily, suggestions?), I was suspicious of Kris' glowing diagnosis. Part of me wants to accept the scar tissue as just scar tissue from some internal injury that has surfaced. It's the same part of me that thought my eye bump was a wart.
The other part of me screams HE HAS NEVER HAD AN INJURY IN THAT SPOT, much less an open, scar causing injury THAT KEEPS GROWING. That's the part that says, I don't care about the $700 cost, cut it off now.
I know that I'm more paranoid than I should be. I know that Kris isn't paranoid at all. Somehow, between the two of us, we'll find a middle we can both live with.