Melanoma. The word doesn't sound threatening, it doesn't sound as though it could turn your world upside down. It doesn't sound terminal. It doesn't sound malignant. When I was told I have malignant melanoma, though I knew what that meant, it didn't fill me with the same level as panic as when the Doctor started saying cancer.
That was 2 years ago, and I was fortunate. It was caught early and I had a wedge of flesh cut out of my body, and all the disease with it. Given an all-clear and told to come back to see the Dermatologist every 6 months. So every 6 months, off I go to the Dermatologist, who looks at my pushing 40 year old naked body, under bright lights and with a magnifying glass. Lady Godiva I may not be and I wonder what runs through his mind - is all flesh just a slab of meat? I don't have a gym toned body - instead it wears the evidence of giving birth twice, eating one too many pieces of chocolate and not dog walking 3 times a week as swiftly as I should. It also now bares many more scars - removals of more "tissue" that is unhealthy. And the waiting continues over and over again. I am cut, the skin gets sent to pathology and the results come in. Then sometimes I am cut again with a wider excision, sometimes I am told - yes this mole or area is changing and they are pre-cancerous cells, sometimes they are dysplascic and sometimes it is the innocent sounding melanoma. I have multiple scars on my feet, my back, my arms, my neck and chunks of me have been examined under a microscope because they're unhealthy. This isn't supposed to happen. I thought I would have one isolated incident. My children are 8 years and 5 years and most days I feel so lucky and blessed. I am well looked after by these medics. They find these diseased cells early enough that I only have to have skin removed by surgery. I don't have to have skin and body poisoned by radio or chemotherapy. Yet. Some days I think I will live to see my children all grown up. And some days I think about the moles that they don't find. My body is covered in freckles and moles. What about the ones that might go unnoticed? I'll be honest. Some of the ones that I thought were fine, have been unhealthy, so how's a girl to know? We don't know how much time we have. Let it be a daily walk in gratitude, harmony and vitality. This finite life on earth is short, even at 80 years its way shorter than we think. There is a time to be born and a time to die, but the living - that part comes in between. This gift of life is just out there waiting to be grabbed with both hands. How will you unwrap this gift today?
