Kinda yucky...

I went to the dermatologist about a week ago for my yearly checkup. I had a freckle on my stomach that had started to look kinda funny – especially after all the stretching my belly endured baking Cole. I showed the doc and she agreed that it looked funny and decided to take it off for testing. I left the office and thought nothing of it again until yesterday when I got a call saying that it was an abnormal mole with abnormal cells that needed to be removed and I could have it done in the office or have a plastic surgeon do it. (Read that run-on sentence really fast and it’ll sound the way it did in my head.) I didn’t hear much more of the conversation because all I could think about was when my sister was 14 they found a spot on her shoulder and it ended up being melanoma. That and the whole plastic surgeon thing… how big a hunk were they talking? Was I going to have to track down Dr. McSteamy so that I wouldn’t have a gaping hole in my stomach? I survived the birth of a child with no holes in my stomach but give me a little freckle and BAM, holey stomach, batman. After a bit of a frantic laugh fest about Dr. McSteamy and batman I went into the freak-out mode. Thankfully it was close enough to the lunch hour that I could go to my mom’s house (where Cole was) and talk to my mom & Phoebe about it while holding my baby tight. If Wyatt & my daddy had been there too it would have been the most comforting place in the entire world. Mom, Phoebe, and Cole were great though. They talked me off the worse-case-scenario ledge and I was able to call the doctor back to get more details. Turns out – on a scale of 1-5 with 1 being the best and 5 being the worst (i.e. melanoma), my spot was about a 3.5 meaning it was not technically cancer. Thank you, Lord! It still has to come out and that will take place on November 30th. I will have the surgery at the dermatologist’s office – apparently the Dr. McSteamys of the world don’t take out as much “stuff” around the bad spot as dermatologists do. I figure, if you are going in there to test the margins then make sure you get enough margins to know we are in the clear. What’s the point of a small plastic surgeon inspired scar if they don’t take out enough and we just have to do it again. No thanks. Plus, I saw the plastic surgeon and he is no Dr. McSteamy. Damn.Fingers crossed for a clean bill of health and nothing but a belly hole come Nov. 30th.