Negative

A couple weeks ago I was brushing my teeth and my wife noticed that a mole on my back had gotten darker. Considering the kind of information that I handle on a daily basis, I knew that this was nothing to be taken lightly, so that morning when I got to work I had a Nurse Practitioner take a look at the mole. Changing moles can be melanoma - this is why I was nervous.

Squamous cell carcinoma shouldn't be confused with melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer. Together, basal and squamous cell carcinoma are responsible for less than 0.1 percent of cancer deaths, while the American Cancer Society estimates almost 8,000 Americans will die from melanoma this year.

In case you don't know, I'm fairly pale. So I don't spend much time outside and when I am outside I try to cover up. Also this was a mole in the middle of my back so it almost never saw the light of day. The NP told me that her 23 yr old daughter was recently diagnosed with a melanoma and that, from the look of it, she felt that I should have the mole removed. On July 3 I had an appointment with a dermatologist.

I asked my wife to take a photograph of the offending mole with my cellphone but the results were less than impressive. So here I have "artist renderings" of the mole before and after I went to see the dermatologist and he wacked off the mole.

The color and shape are based on my wife's description :-)

This afternoon I called the dermatologist's office to get the pathology results. (they said to call back in 10 days but I didn't really feel like calling on Friday the 13th for pathology results - go figure.)

Then the voice on the other end of the line said "Negative, nothing to worry about." This, with everything else has made for kind of a tense week.