"I have this mole on my left hip," I told the nurse in the dermatology clinic.

The last time I was in a derm clinic was during a two week rotation as a resident.  I don't remember much but I do remember the ABC's of skin cancer and a lot of people getting liquid nitrogen sprayed on their face. 

A is for assymetry. 

The patient room was disarmingly small.  I'm talking Alice In Wonderland after she drank the Growth Potion small.  I can't remember being in a room this tiny since we visited those back alley mom-and-pop cafes in Seoul with the two-inch square napkinettes. 

B is for borders, as in skin cancer doesn't tend to heed them.

"What do you do?" the older nurse asked for her questionnaire. 

"Physician.  Hospitalist.  Just inpatient stuff," I clarified.

"Oh, how do you like it?"

I recently had a patient ask me that question.  Actually she had said, "You are always so relaxing and calm.  How do you do it?"

In a brief break in personal borders, I had confided, "Well, thank you.  I try to be calm on the outside, but I'm pretty stressed on the inside, lately."  It was a bad month.  It was a bad idea to tell her that. 

For the rest of that patient's hospital stay, she told everyone she could, "He's calm on the outside and stressed on the inside," while pointing at me in the hall.  Sigh.   Transfer to psych floor.  Note to self: confide in psychiatrists, not in psychiatric patients. 

Now when someone asks me how I like my job, like the derm nurse, I just say,

"It's ... stressful."

C is for color, as in cancer often has an uneven distribution of color.  C is also for change.

"It's kind of stretched out the past couple years," I tell the nurse the reason for my appointment before she can suggest a rhinoplasty. 

I assumed it was expanding because my hip and thigh muscles have gotten larger.  Core muscle exercises and sparring with 250 pound wrestlers will do that.

The nurse left.  I undressed to my boxers (for the total skin exam).  The overhead lighting and office context made me look surprisingly buff in the mirror.  They should light gyms like this.  I flexed a little and did the stuff you do when no one's looking (or when you're whoring yourself out for a blog picture).

An older white-haired whitecoated physician assistant walked in with the nurse. 

I showed him my mitotic hip mole.  Blah blah blah dermatology lingo blah blah blah.  It's been a decade since I did my derm rotation and yep it's still boring. 

I have to admit I had been mildly concerned about my changing mole.  Melanoma is 95% curable if found early but what if it had spread already.  Worse things have happened ... to many of my patients, in fact.  The problem with knowing everything that can happen is ... knowing everything that can happen.  I imagined a melodrama of classic Corean soap opera proportions.  Visits from long lost friends and childhood crushes who secretly longed for me since being switched as babies in the nursery.  Having to wear that beanie that all TV cancer patients have to wear.  Final face offs with colleagues I've despised.  Going on a world tour with Morgan Freeman and learning the true meaning of schmaltzy pandering box office crap.  Finishing the final details of my plot to lure my enemies into a warehouse full of mechanical death traps long after I am dead.  But deathbed fantasies have short-lived appeal when you have children.

"It looks like a simple seborrheic keratosis," the white-haired P.A. said. 

Oh.  Oh!  I didn't think about that.  I'm used to seeing them on old veterans and grandmothers.  Well, that made sense.  What didn't make sense was why this white-haired P.A. was explaining all this while staring at my bare chest.

Seriously, old man.  Eyes.  Up.  Here.  What the fuck?  I'll send you a picture, it'll last longer.

He gave me a two minute description of the biopsy they were going to do, and 95% of that was spent staring at my nipples which wanted to invert themselves out of sheer creep factor.  Maybe I flexed too much earlier. 

After numbing the area, he shaved off the entire mole.  I was expecting some pain but it didn't hurt at all.  I went home less a gram of flesh, never knowing what the actual derm doctor looked like, and having a little idea of what it's like to be a woman.

All in all, a fairly benign day.

Biopsy result:  Seborrheic keratosis, benign.

In other news, my wife Amy became an official citizen of the U.S. of A. today.  She only realized a few years ago that she wasn't a citizen; she was a legal resident alien.  She'd been in the U.S. since age three and married me (not at age three) but that still doesn't make you a citizen.  She's been studying for the test for the past few months, and finally got her test today. 

My advice to her was limited to:
1) If they ask who your senators are, do not say, "Your answer will depend on the state you live in."  (Which is exactly what the study CD said.)
2) If they ask you what Martin Luther King Day is, do not say, "It's for black people."

She got 7 out of 8 questions right, and on the last question named 12 of the 13 original colonies.  She still passed.  I guess I gave good advice.  My baby's legal.