When ninjas attack!

Have I ever told you about the time I was caught in the middle of a ninja attack? No? Oh, well, let me tell you. You see, a few months ago I was walking down the street, doing some Christmas shopping, shopping bags in both hands. I was walking down the sidewalk of an outdoor shopping center, humming along to the Christmas music being piped up and down the street, when suddenly, out of nowhere, a ninja jumped down from an overhang over the door of GAP and landed silently right in front of me. I gasped in surprise...because ninjas are nothing if not surprising. But even with his mask on, I could tell his eyes were fixed on something behind me. So I spun around. Sure enough, another ninja had landed behind me. Suddenly they materialized - six ninjas - all around me. It was three against three and I was caught in the middle. Before I knew it throwing stars were whizzing all around me. Despite my efforts to get out of there by shrieking and running, I was grazed in the shoulder by a throwing star. It slashed right through my winter coat as it whizzed by. Here is the photographic evidence of being caught in the middle of a ninja attack.

Scar from Christmas ninja attack!

Oh, alright. You got me. You're too smart to fool. I wasn't really caught in a ninja attack. My scar is not from being grazed by a throwing star. It's from having skin cancer removed. Not even remotely as interesting as my made up story, but here's the REAL story of my scar.

Quite some time ago (a couple of years ago?) I had a mysterious red spot a little smaller than the size of a dime show up on my shoulder. I didn't ever really hurt. It itched some times, but it never changed shape, size, or color. So I just lived with it. Until I got engaged. I did not want this red circle showing up in all of my photos of me in my wedding dress. So a couple of weeks before the wedding I finally went to the doctor about it to see if I could get some sort of cream or something to make it disappear. The doctor had to scrape some of the skin away to send it to the lab (which made the spot way more red and showed up even MORE in the photos...the opposite of what I was trying to achieve). She didn't know what in the world it was. She gave me a prescription cream and told me if it didn't go away in a couple of weeks I would have to come back in to get a biopsy.

Well, the wedding came and went and our new life started. And that stinkin' little spot didn't change one bit. I kind of put off going back for a biopsy, until I knew that if I waited much longer my doctor was going to yell at me (not really) for not getting back in. So, I finally made an appointment in December. I went in and my doctor kind of took a "punch" of my shoulder, threw whatever she got into a vile, put a couple of stitches in, slapped a band-aid on it and told me she'd let me know what the lab found.

It was a Tuesday night. My husband and I had just left his brother's house after having our weekly pizza night with his family. I was just pulling out of their neighborhood when my phone rang. I didn't recognize the number but it had the local area code, so I answered it. It was my doctor. She was calling me from her home. "Melissa, I just got the lab results back from your biopsy. Unfortunately, it is skin cancer. But the good news is that it is basal-cell carcinoma which is the most common form of skin cancer and is easiest to treat." I took a deep breath and said, "Okay, what do we do?" (At this point my husband, although sitting right next to me, had no idea who was on the phone or what we were talking about.) She said, "We have to cut it out of the skin. And once we cut it out, it's gone. It won't come back, it won't spread. Basically if you have to get skin cancer, this is the best kind to get." I told her I had an appointment the next morning for her to take out the couple of stitches from the biopsy. She told me we could do the procedure right there in the clinic, at my current appointment time. I hung up and tried to say to my husband, "That was my doctor. I have skin cancer," without crying. I did not succeed.

When we got home we got on our phones to call our families. I called my sister's house but she wasn't there, so I spoke with my brother-in-law and told him what was going on. He said he would tell her to call me when she got home. When she called me, I assumed that her husband told her what was going on. After I said hello, I said in my very best Eeyore voice I could muster, "I have skin cancer." She yelled, "What?" Then I started giggling. "Jer didn't tell you?" She said, "No! What's going on?" "Oh," I said. "That spot on my shoulder? I found out tonight it's skin cancer." I giggled some more as I said it. "Why are you laughing?" she asked. "I don't know. Because that's how I deal with stuff. I giggle even when I don't know why I'm giggling." She should know by now that it's just a natural reflex for me and I've done it our entire lives. I can't help it. So, just our family and a few close friends that I texted knew what was going on. We just put out a few calls for prayer and kept it mostly to ourselves.

That night I didn't sleep very well. I couldn't stop crying. Not the hysterical, "My life is over," kind of crying. Just frequent, "I'm scared and I don't like this...what's going to happen?" kind of weeping. My poor husband. His wife of three months was having a hard time dealing and he had to lay next to a sniveling, wet mess.

The next morning my husband and I went in to get my skin cancer removed. It was December twenty-first. It took the doctor about an hour to numb me up with some shots, remove three different areas of skin, and stitch me up. There were two not-so-fun moments during the whole ordeal. The first was the four shots I had to get in my shoulder, around the area, to numb me up. Now, needles themselves...never really bothered me. But the ph balance of what she used caused it to really sting as it entered my blood stream. It felt like one really long bee sting. Four times.

The second not-so-fun moment was when she was actually cutting the cancer out with her snipping shears (not a medical term...my term). It was on my shoulder, which means it was next to my ear. It sounded awful. I cringed and told her the sound was disturbing. So to cover up the sound, my doctor started singing a Christmas carol. She better stick to doctoring people because an American Idol she is not.

I ended up getting two layers of stitches. Seven of them up on top. She gave me a prescription for pain meds. I headed to work and my husband headed to the pharmacy for me. That night I got home from work, changed the dressing on my shoulder, changed clothes (nothing I could pull over my head because I had very limited range of motion) and we headed out to have dinner with friends. Dinner went well...I didn't even tell them what happened earlier in the day...and we headed back home. I was bleeding quite a bit so I needed to change the dressing again before I went to bed. And that's when I noticed it. I could see only five stitches and the top of my wound was open. Great. Now what do we do? After a little discussing and being on hold for a long time with the ER, we decided to go into the ER. I knew I wouldn't sleep well with an open wound and I wanted that sucker closed up so the scaring would be a minimum.(Joke was on me!)

After just about an hour in the ER, I was sent home with just butterfly strips over my missing stitches. (They had come out when I had changed the dressing...stuff was sticking to that gauze. Gross.) The ER doc assured me the strips would hold and I didn't need new stitches. I was not a very happy camper at this stage of the game. And it was nearing midnight after a very long day.

Christmas came and went and the only thing I had to worry about was telling people not to touch my left side when they hugged me. Lots of hugging was going on...we saw a lot of family.

One week later I had an appointment to get my stitches (or what was left) out. At this point, the way this was all supposed to go down, was that this cancer would cause me to go to the doctor twice. Once to get it removed, once to get my stitches out. End of story. Except...not. A couple of days before my appointment to get the stitches out, my doctor called. "I have some not so great news. The lab reports came back and they're saying that I didn't get all of the cancer." "What does that mean?" I asked. "It means I have to remove more skin." I was waiting for the "April Fools!" but seeing how it was the end of December and not April first, she didn't say that. "Okay, so is it better to wait until I'm all healed up or is it better to do it right away again?" She said to get it done as soon as possible. I told her I had an appointment with her later that week. So we decided to do round two then. My doctor apologized and said she was so certain she got it all. She couldn't understand how she had missed any and she wasn't understanding the lab results...she was going to have to call them because she couldn't tell if she didn't go deep enough or wide enough. She said she would understand if I wanted another doctor to do the procedure. I told her that no, she knew the history and we had come this far. I was sticking with her.

It was at this point that I fell apart. I was so mad. I had a major meltdown because I was so rattled by the whole experience. I told my husband that I felt I was failing as a wife, that I wasn't sure why I felt like I was letting everyone down so much lately. I felt like I couldn't do anything right and I was so unreasonably upset by things that had nothing to do with my health. Later, looking back, I realized that Satan was using my weakness of fear and attacking it full-on. I hadn't been diligent in reading my Bible on a regular basis for a few weeks and my spiritual armor was down. I was easily susceptible to believing Satan's lies. I mean, the wheels fell off. I have never felt or acted like that before. I could not pull myself together. Again, my poor husband. He had to put up with a lot those few days. I was so mad at everything - mad at my doctor, mad at the lab, mad that I felt I could never wear a sleeveless shirt again, mad at the sun for causing this whole spiral, mad that I was mad.

A few days later we went in for round two. It was January second and this time I had the day off. We went through the whole thing again...the numbing shots, the cutting, the bandaging. This time I got twelve stitches on my shoulder. I'll spare you the details. I also got a small spot removed off of my back that the doctor had found when giving me a once over. That required only two stitches. After the final carving was finished, we went out to eat at Applebees, but the rest of the day I was wiped out. We went over to his parents' house that night to watch the Badgers play in the Rosebowl. My parents were there too. I slept through most of the evening in a chair. The next several days I wore the exact same zip-up hoodie to work because I could barely move my arm. I wanted to sleep on my left side in the worst way but that was a long way off.

Over a week later I went back in for the FINAL TIME. Oh my word.
What was supposed to be this:
1. get the cancer removed
2. go back in to get stitches removed & have less than an inch scar
-turned into this:
1. get cancer removed
2. go to the ER
3. go to get stitches removed so MORE of my shoulder can be carved up a second time (and basically doubling the size of my scar)
4. go back in to get the stitches removed & have an inch and a half scar

I was finally on step number 4. And it was then that my doctor told me the second set of lab results came back. You know, the ones we had to do because the lab said she didn't get it all the first time. Well, surprise, surprise, the second set of labs came back as "no cancer - scar tissue only was detected." My doc said, "I KNEW I got it all the first time. Those (insert word here that rhymes with dastberds)."

So, the second "carving" (as I like to call it) was completely unnecessary. When the dust settled, the entire ordeal from start to finish cost $6487.90. At least from what I can tell from all of the paperwork. I'm still fighting the second lab bill since they screwed up.

And it looks like it's the pale life for me. Heavy sunscreen and lots of shade for the rest of my life. Sun exposure is a big risk for me now and I'm not going through all of that rig-a-rah-mole again! Occasionally my shoulder still hurts and it itches A LOT. But I'm fine now.

I leave you with some fun facts about basal-cell carcinoma. Because knowledge is half the battle in preventing, people!

Basal-cell cancer is the most common skin cancer. It is much more common in fair-skinned individuals (raising hand).

Statistically, approximately 3 out of 10 Caucasians may develop a basal-cell cancer within their lifetime.

In 80 percent of all cases, basal-cell cancers are found on the head and neck.