If you’re a regular reader of my blog, first of all, thank you! Secondly, you probably remember a post at the beginning of the year where I talked about my AL Project. This was going to be the year that I really worked on self-improvement and health! One part of my project included getting a physical for the first time since the pandemic started. While there, I asked my nurse practitioner about a strange white spot on my nose. I had actually noticed it pre-pandemic and brought it up with a previous nurse practitioner who said she would look into what it might be…and then I never saw her again. I think she moved or something. And in the scary unknowns of the two years that followed, I just never made another appointment. Anyway, two years later it was significantly bigger than it had been and, although not terribly noticeable, I wanted to make sure it was nothing to worry about since I’m fair-skinned and freckly.
My new nurse practitioner looked at it and said that because of that and a few other spots I pointed out she was going to refer me to a dermatologist for a full body skin check. So, two days before my 40th birthday, I went to the dermatologist’s office. I stripped down and put on the little gown, and the nurse practitioner (whose husband is a dermatologist there, I believe) came in and started the check. It seemed to me that she was barely glancing at my skin as she was going through it, but I figured she knew what she was doing.
Being January of 2022, we were all wearing masks, so when it came time for her to look at the spot on my nose that I was concerned about, I pulled my mask down and pointed it out. I mentioned that I thought I’d had a chicken pox scar near where it started, and was going to go on to tell her about how that scar had been a pock mark (hence the name), and had never been white before. When the rest of me got tan (or, let’s face it, sunburned), it stayed white. When I got flushed (as I often do for various reasons, including wearing a mask) it stayed white. But before I could tell her any of this, she interrupted me and asked how I knew it was a chicken pox scar. That threw me–I don’t think I’ve ever been interrupted like that by a medical professional. I told her there was a picture of my siblings and I when we’d all had chicken pox in roughly 1983, and that there was a spot on my nose in the same place as the mark. But she didn’t seem to fully listen to what I said because she said something like, “Oh, because your mom told you or something.” Again, I was thrown, and didn’t quite know what to say.
She went on to say it was nothing to worry about, and it was probably just scar tissue. At this, I tried again to tell her that it had never been white before a few years ago, and it had definitely been getting bigger over time, and she said something like, “Well, with everyone wearing masks, sometimes things get irritated and are more noticeable.” I told her again that it wasn’t a case of something being more noticeable–it was definitely growing in size. Then she pulled out her phone and took a picture of it, and left the room to “consult” the doctor about it. When she came back she said he thought it was just scar tissue too, and then she said something about me having rosacea and that she could “treat the rosacea and then it would be less noticeable.” And that’s when I started to get a little angry. I told her loudly and clearly that I didn’t care what it looked like, that I just wanted to make sure it was nothing to worry about. And she had the audacity to tell me that they “look at skin cancers every day”, and that this wasn’t it, and that the rosacea treatment would just be a gel to put on a couple times a day. And that’s when I got REALLY angry.
I told her that I’d had an uncle die because of malignant melanoma that had metastasized, and that he’d asked his doctor about it a few times over the years and was told it was “nothing to worry about”, and I said again that I didn’t care what it looked like. That I wouldn’t be “treating any rosacea”, and that if she didn’t know what it was for sure then I’d like her to find out. She kind of half rolled her eyes and said, “We can do a biopsy if you want, but things on the nose just don’t always heal very well” and that she doesn’t like to do things on the nose unless they’re really necessary. “But”, she went on to say, “we don’t want to you just worry about it constantly, so if that’s what you want we can do it. I said, “Yes. That’s what I want.” I reiterated that I didn’t care what it looked like.
She left the room while the nurse injected something to numb the area. I was so angry at this point that I was crying (I hate that about myself–it takes a lot to really make me angry, but when I get there I almost always cry). I told the nurse that I wasn’t trying to be difficult, that I was genuinely concerned that it might be something to worry about, and that it absolutely had been getting bigger over the years. The nurse didn’t say much, and then she also left the room, and when the nurse practitioner came back in she had suddenly changed her tone slightly so it didn’t feel flat out dismissive anymore–just slightly annoyed and clearly trying to placate me. She said a few words about how she understood I was thinking about my uncle, and that, again, they didn’t want me to be worried about it. Then she took a little biopsy and I went home.
A week or two later I got a call from the dermatologist’s office. My biopsy results showed that it was a basal cell carcinoma, which the nurse (or receptionist?) who called assured me was the least dangerous kind of skin cancer. She said that it’s very common, and almost never life-threatening, and that, like the nurse practitioner had said, mine “didn’t present how these things normally do”. I got angry all over again, thinking about how dismissive she had been about my concerns, and how she didn’t even care enough to call me herself and had someone else call and justify her not thinking it was anything to worry about. Then she said they were going to refer me to a plastic surgeon because of where it’s located (right on the tip of my nose).
And that brings me to now–four months after I got the news that my concerns were justified, I’ll go in tomorrow to have it removed. During my consult with the plastic surgeon, he said that if it had been smaller it would be an easier procedure but because of the size and the location, I would need to be put under general anesthesia. So I’m kicking myself for neglecting to get it looked at again before it got so big. But it is what it is. And I’m glad I fought to have it biopsied because I’m sure it would have just kept getting bigger and I might have eventually needed half of my nose removed to get it all. As it is, I have no idea what my face will look like after tomorrow–they might have to take half my nose, but as I told her multiple times, “I don’t care what it looks like as long as I know it’s nothing to worry about.”
So, this is my (very long) reminder to everyone not to put off getting things checked out that don’t seem right. And that if you go to someone who doesn’t take you seriously, fight to be heard or go get another opinion. Clearly I’m not over this experience yet, but I think tomorrow will be step in that direction. When I went back to my general nurse practitioner I told her about my experience with the dermatology nurse practitioner. She was appalled, and apologetic, and said she was so proud of me for advocating for myself. Then she said that she was going to talk to her supervisor about not referring to that dermatology office anymore because I wasn’t the first person to tell her they hadn’t had a great experience there, though none of them had been as bad as mine.
And if you have any spare good vibes to send my way, I’ll be going under the knife around 12:30pm CDT tomorrow (Monday). In the words of Michael Scott, “I’ll see you on the flippity flip!” (Though when I do see you, don’t be alarmed–my nose might look pretty gnarly for awhile…)
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