The Thing That No One Wants...

Wow, this has been a really tough month for Rod & I.  I'm not really sure about how to go about explaining what has been going on in our personal life... but it is what it is and to God be the Glory, right?

Well, it begins some time ago.  I have a birthmark type mole on my right leg.  It's been there for as long as I can possibly remember.  I don't remember not having it.  Quite a few months ago, I thought I had imagined that something with it had changed.  It took me a couple of months to acknowledge that yes, something had changed.

With Rod on unemployment, we have Basic Health coverage.  I imagine you aren't familiar with BH - but it's where you pay based upon your income... which seems to be a lot for how much he really gets on unemployment.  Issue here, there's a big deductible, copays and the like and I believe it's 80/20 coverage.  Which when you begin getting bills, really sucks.  We had coverage similar to this when Josiah was born & the bills were pretty crazy.  So needless to say, I didn't go to the dermatologist.  We simply couldn't afford the $1500 deductible.

Turn the clock forward a couple of months, I find myself pregnant with baby #6.  A month or so later, I realize that BH has now moved me over to the DSHS Maternity benefits... and that my dermatology would probably be covered.  Well, I hope it is!  If not, oh well!

I go into my Midwife one week and in talking, I show her my mole.  She refers me to the local dermatologist. A month or so later, I finally get in.  They of course, take off the mole or birthmark or whatever it is.

Two days later, I get a call from the dermatologist that took off the mole.  I imagine that you realize a direct call from a doctor about something like this is never really a good thing.  It's much better to receive a piece of paper in the mail.  She of course (I know b'c she called) that it is early melanoma.  They are confident that all of it has been taken off.  But it's standard procedure to go ahead and remove more skin in that general area.  Apt. set up to have a consult with a surgeon.  (It's an outpatient surgery.)  Apt. set for the surgery.

Rod actually had gotten a call from her a bit earlier.  She said she couldn't yet talk to him.. because my privacy paperwork had not been scanned yet into the medical records... so she couldn't verify that it was okay to give him my personal info.  She was going to be out of town this coming week - so she really had to talk to me directly, asap.  I wanted to wring the neck of whoever decided to put medical records into the computer in the first place... that stupid sheet is right there in my records, ya know!!??

Wow, that was enough for one day.  I sat, I cried.  I tried to absorb the fact that I have now had "skin cancer" and that for the rest of my life, doctors will look over every mole I've got over every part of my body.  It seemed so crazy... on every medical record from here on out - it's going to say that I have at least at one point in time had melanoma.  My kids are going to be putting that on their medical records for the rest of their lives.

And then, on a side note, I think... well, at least I should have taken a darn picture of it for my blog! I guess I've gotta look for some humor somewhere!