I just had this feeling.
Maybe it was because I had been here before. Or perhaps it was because a heightened sense of awareness accompanies any situation where I find myself wrapped in a paper toga and wearing little else. But probably it was from the way Nurse Linda was acting.
As it happens in these semi-regular skin cancer screenings, she had been moving rapidly through her survey routine, calling out information about various moles and aberrations. Occasionally stopping to measure this or that, her pace was consistent, her actions methodical.
But when she walked around the examining table and pulled the drape away from my back, I just had this feeling. She didn’t touch the area in question at first. Yet I could feel her gaze. In a moment, she gently rubbed across it.
“We’ll do a biopsy on this one,” she announced. Shortly thereafter, the other nurse had injected a local. Nurse Linda disappeared for a few minutes. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the biopsy kit spread out on the table. Nurse Linda reappeared, washed at the sink and donned rubber gloves.
“You’ll probably feel me moving around back here,” she said, “Maybe a little tug or two.”
Several tugs later, a bandage was applied and instructions were pushed my direction on the care for the wound. “We’ll call in a week or two and let you know what we found.”
I already knew. I just had this feeling. This one would come back positive — malignant. And it would be like the rest. Basal cell carcinoma. The least invasive and dangerous. Easily treated.
It was . . . and it will be. I count it a blessing that my skin cancer, the most serious of my ailments to date, is such a minimal intrusion on my life. Especially when I know others who live daily with illness or pain that would incapacitate someone like me.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all the world’s problems were like the growth on my back? Easy to diagnose and treat. Serious, but well within our problem-solving ability. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just take side-trips that returned us neatly to the main path?