Not so big news....

So I thought I would try keeping some "news" to myself, but it seems difficult to do that. (Which makes me wonder if I try to garner sympathy too much...)

Anyway.

I went to see a family practitioner a couple of weeks ago. Showed him a slowly growing 'thing' on my forehead. His diagnosis, without a biopsy mind you, was basil cell carcinoma. Basil cell carcinoma is a type of skin cancer. A fairly benign type, but still... The doctors words were, "If I were to have a type of skin cancer, this would be it."

If he does that to many more patients, he really needs to stop. Far too relative a statement to be very encouraging. I'm assuming it lies somewhere between, "If I were to stub my toe, that would be the toe I would stub." or "If I could pick which bus to get hit by, that would be the one."

So he sent me to a specialist, due to the fact it's on my face. Saw him today. A local cosmetic surgeon. Funny guy. Tie-died smock. Crazy hair. 20 year old glasses. Called me "brother" at least 10 times. He agreed with the first doctor. Didn't hesitate at all to say it was basil cell carcinoma.

The weird thing is that he also talked to me into removing the 2 small moles on my forehead. (In addition to the cancer.) He said it was like 5 bucks a mole. For some stupid reason, I wasn't sure I wanted to.

"Why didn't anyone tell me my forehead was so big!"

Jeez. I should just shave my head. Stupid hair loss.

That larger pink spot is the cancer. Looks a lot bigger in this picture than in my mirror. Weird. It has grown. It's probably 35% larger than when I first noticed it a year ago. Seemed like it stopped growing for most of that year, but just in the last couple of weeks it's reached that 35% mark.

But about the moles. There's that little one above the cancer and an almost matching one on the other side. (Couldn't get a picture with all 3 in it.) The other one is about a half inch lower. It's weird that I hesitated to have them removed. Those things have been part of my manlyish good looks for a long time. They can develop into problems later, so they're coming off too.

So there's my big secret. No one in my RL (besides the doctors) know about it. Still planning on not telling my parents (or anyone in RL for that matter.) If my parents find out, might as well tell Brian Williams on a slow news day. I don't really want that kind of attention.


Kudos to whomever gets the photo caption reference.