My continuing history of not having cancer

I was born with a whole bunch of moles and freckles all over my body. Two in particular, on my back, were rather large and irregular. While my pediatrician told my mother they were nothing to worry about, she did worry. And as I got older and learned about the signs of how to spot skin cancer, so did I. Additionally, throughout high school and my first couple of years of college, various people advised me that I should definitely have the two moles on my back - and possibly two on my left arm - looked at. When I was 20, I bit the bullet and went to a dermatologist in my hometown. He looked me over and thought that it was imperative that the two moles on my back, the two on my arm, and several others come off ASAP. Being young and naive enough to believe that my doctor was acting in my best interests (as opposed to the best interests of his wallet), I agreed. When the day for surgery came, he circled TWENTY-FOUR moles which he insisted needed to come off, including the two on my back and and the two on my arm.

Over two hours later, I was wheeled out of surgery with twenty-one sets of stitches, and one set of staples in my head. The two moles on my left arm were still there, still circled. As they were two of the four that I had originally been concerned about, I immediately asked. He said that he had decided they did not need to come off. (I was quite confused by this, as he had removed many smaller, less-irregular moles during the surgery, but again, he was the doctor, so I accepted this.) I would also like to just throw in here that my mom and I had been told that my surgery would last no more than half an hour; you can imagine how panicked my mother was when it took them over two hours. Also, one of the staples holding a bandage to my head went through my ear. Yeah. That was pleasant. And after all that, all of the 23 biopsies came back normal.

Anyway, over the course of the next year, the two moles on my back GREW BACK. That scared me back into the dermatologist's office. The doctor again insisted that they needed to be removed ASAP. Since there were only two, he did the surgery right there in his office under local anasthetic. A week later he called with terrifying news: some of the cells in one of the moles had come back as abnormal. Not that they were cancerous, simply abnormal. This could indicate cancer, or this could indicate nothing. He wanted to do another surgery to excise the margins. He explained that to me as the removal of a small area of skin surrounding the mole site. I didn't expect the surgery itself to be a big deal, although I was in a panic that I had skin cancer. Additionally, I was preparing to leave for a semester in Russia - and my plane left in two weeks. He wanted me to be in the surgery center under general anasthetic, although because of my departure date, this wasn't possible. Again, I was operated on in his office under local anasthetic. I was shocked, at the end of the surgery, to discover that the "small area of skin surrounding the mole site" was in fact a crooked, four-inch incision across my right shoulder blade. The result of this surgery was that I now look as though I have been stabbed in my back and stitched up by some ghetto quack. (You can see what the butcher did here and here, if you want.) The biopsy came back normal. I should mention that throughout all of the above I had health insurance, so all of those procedures cost me very little.

Despite all of the above, I have continued to fret over the two moles on my left arm that were not removed during the initial surgery. I knew all about the ABCs of skin cancer, and these two hit A, B, C and D. I was also pretty convinced that the bigger of the two ached, although that may very well have been in my head. I considered having them taken off and biopsied while I was in Korea (where not only did I have health insurance, but health care over there is reasonably priced even without it). However, I was worried that if the biopsies were to come back showing a malignancy... then what would I do? Stay in Korea for the entire length of my treatment, however long that might be? Or go to the US, and try and show an American doctor my Korean health records and try to convince them that I needed cancer treatment? I opted for having it done here in the US.

Now, the biggest problem with my life plan is that I don't have health insurance, and as we all know, the health care system in the US is seriously fucked up. See, the few times I went to the doctor in Korea, I just went. They checked me out, ran tests, gave me meds and sent me on my way at a very low price. Meanwhile, in order to get these moles off... first I had to "establish myself as a patient." This meant that for my first appointment they weighed me, checked my blood pressure, had me fill out some forms, and charged me $108. My next appointment was when they actually removed the moles. That cost $335 - but as I'd written before, had the moles turned out to be malignant, I would've been charged an extra $50! (There is no legitimate reason for that at all; they simply charge more for the removal of malignant tissue samples than they do for benign ones, even though they don't know the status of the sample in question at the time of removal!) Also, my doctor's office gives discounts (although not very big ones!) to those of us who don't have health insurance. Yes, that's right. If I'd had insurance, the insurance company would have been billed MORE for the exact same service that I was billed for. And people wonder why health insurance is so expensive. Additionally, the company which did the biopsy itself, has billed me $270 for the biopsy. Grrrr.

So, $713 later, and I still don't have skin cancer. Which is great, don't get me wrong, but that's an awful lot of money for nothing more than a new set of scars.