Last year, my dermatologist made the big mistake of telling me that there is only a 2% chance of my precancerous Actinic Keratosis, or AKs, actually turning cancerous, and that he could freeze off the ones on my head. He should have lied and told me they were all melanomas, and that if I went to the tanning salon again I would end up with a hole in my skull the size of a moon crater. I'm sure he regrets showing me just how quickly and easily the freezing works. It is the perfect remedy for someone like me who has always believed more in damage-control than in prevention when dealing with skin issues. Simply put, " If those AKs start a showin', get that liquid nitrogen a flowin'."
While I was waiting for him in the exam room, I stretched out on the motorized examination table in my underwear and made myself comfortable, pressing the buttons on the hand control until the table looked like a lounge chair at a pool. For a joke, I got my sun glasses out of my jacket and turned on the bright circular examination light that looked like the sun, then positioned myself on the table to look like I was suntanning just as my dermatologist came into the room.
"Michael, this is better than a tanning booth," I said, looking up at him through the sunglasses without moving my arms or legs.
"This light won't tan you but it can probably blind you if you look at it too long," he laughed.
I sat up and took off my sunglasses. " You know me, I'll try to get a tan from any light bulb I can."
" I should just put your name on this bottle," he said, holding up his trusty, little blue canister of liquid nitrogen and shifting his focus to the top of my head. "Let's see the damage you keep on insisting to do to yourself." At 6' 4", Michael could have looked down at the top of my head even if I was standing.
"Before we start the cancer hunt, could you take a look at this redness in between my eyebrows and over here," I looked up and asked, pointing to the edges of both my nostrils and around my beard.
He put down the canister and sat on his stool so we could be eye-to-eye while he examined me.
As he assessed my face, I couldn't help assessing his. Besides being taller than me, he is also younger than me. There had been a time when I was younger than all the doctors I went to, but the scales started tipping around ten years ago, until I now I find myself being older than most of them. Michael's baby face makes it especially hard to figure out just how much younger than me he actually is. There's no denying the fact that, whatever his age, he protects his skin better than I do. I'd rather this be the case than having a dermatologist who didn't have healthier skin than me. It would be like going to a Speech Therapist who stutters worse than I do.
"This light won't tan you but it can probably blind you if you look at it too long," he laughed.
I sat up and took off my sunglasses. " You know me, I'll try to get a tan from any light bulb I can."
" I should just put your name on this bottle," he said, holding up his trusty, little blue canister of liquid nitrogen and shifting his focus to the top of my head. "Let's see the damage you keep on insisting to do to yourself." At 6' 4", Michael could have looked down at the top of my head even if I was standing.
"Before we start the cancer hunt, could you take a look at this redness in between my eyebrows and over here," I looked up and asked, pointing to the edges of both my nostrils and around my beard.
He put down the canister and sat on his stool so we could be eye-to-eye while he examined me.
As he assessed my face, I couldn't help assessing his. Besides being taller than me, he is also younger than me. There had been a time when I was younger than all the doctors I went to, but the scales started tipping around ten years ago, until I now I find myself being older than most of them. Michael's baby face makes it especially hard to figure out just how much younger than me he actually is. There's no denying the fact that, whatever his age, he protects his skin better than I do. I'd rather this be the case than having a dermatologist who didn't have healthier skin than me. It would be like going to a Speech Therapist who stutters worse than I do.
A dermatologist is a walking advertisement for himself, a book that always gets judged by it's cover. Most other kinds of doctors don't get judged by their appearance as severely. Dermatologists are the only doctors who aren't allowed to have a suntan. It's certainly frowned upon, and could cost them a few potential patients. People want their dermatologists to have good skin, and are generally put-off by ones who don't. And as Botox treatments become more and more the norm, patients will expect their dermatologists to be wrinkle-free. Soon, aging dermatologists aren't going to be allowed to wrinkle even if they want to.
Exactly how direct is the correlation between how much dermatologists are able to take care of their own skin and how much they will be able to help yours? To be fair, shouldn't we make the same correlation about other kinds of doctors, and demand to see their body parts? And maybe MRIs of their brain and organs too? Would it make a difference if you knew your cardiologist has a faulty heart, or your psychiatrist had a traumatic brain injury, or if your proctologist has an abnormally shaped asshole? Usually, we only learn these kind of things after they die, or, after we sleep with them.
Michael held my jaw and tilted my head side-to-side and up and down, then brushed my eyebrow hairs forward with his thumbs and parted the short hairs of my beard with his index fingers.
"You've got three conditions going on, but none of them look too bad. The flakiness is a little bit of psoriasis and the redness under it is probably a combination of seborrheic dermatitis and tinea faciei, which is just a fancy word for fungus," he explained as he went to the sink and washed his hands.
Exactly how direct is the correlation between how much dermatologists are able to take care of their own skin and how much they will be able to help yours? To be fair, shouldn't we make the same correlation about other kinds of doctors, and demand to see their body parts? And maybe MRIs of their brain and organs too? Would it make a difference if you knew your cardiologist has a faulty heart, or your psychiatrist had a traumatic brain injury, or if your proctologist has an abnormally shaped asshole? Usually, we only learn these kind of things after they die, or, after we sleep with them.
Michael held my jaw and tilted my head side-to-side and up and down, then brushed my eyebrow hairs forward with his thumbs and parted the short hairs of my beard with his index fingers.
"You've got three conditions going on, but none of them look too bad. The flakiness is a little bit of psoriasis and the redness under it is probably a combination of seborrheic dermatitis and tinea faciei, which is just a fancy word for fungus," he explained as he went to the sink and washed his hands.
" I have fungus on my face?"
" It's just like athlete's foot."
" Then why isn't it called athlete's face? And isn't 'psoriasis' dandruff?"
" Basically."
" How do I have dandruff it I don't have hair? Isn't not having dandruff one of the benefits of being bald?"
" It's pretty common in the eyebrows if the skin is dry."
" I see. God makes me bald but still insists on me having dandruff. That's really fair," I smirked. "So, I 've got dandruff AND fungi on my face. Is there anything else? Are mushrooms going to grow out of my nostrils, or any other crops? "
He laughed and told me not to worry about it. "I'll write a script for 2 ointments, and for a shampoo that you rub into your eyebrows and around the red areas at your beard. It should be gone in two or three weeks. Let's give the rest of you a look-over." He picked up the nitrogen canister and adjusted the angle of the examination light over me, then rolled over the huge magnifying glass attached to a metal pole with a wide wheeled base that I've nicknamed 'Cyclops'.
The examination always begins at the top of my head. I call this 'the bald man's bull's eye'. It seems to be a landing pad for cancer. As a matter of fact, being bald increases the risk of skin cancer almost as much as smoking an entire pack of cigarettes every day increases the risk of lung cancer (bald smokers are really screwed.)
Michael moves his finger in slow motion to make sure he doesn't miss any small mark or bump. He only found one AK to zap with the nitrogen, which impressed both of us. After he went over the tops of my shoulders, I laid down on the table so he could have a complete frontal view of my entire body. This includes Michael lowering my underwear, which, though done only for a few seconds without any sexual overtones or even undertones from him, is usually my favorite part of the cancer hunt. If I'm not naked at some point during a visit to a doctor, I feel I've not gotten my money's worth. But after finding out my face was filled with dandruff and fungus, I wasn't feeling particularly attractive. All I could think about was getting that face shampoo as quickly as possible.
When I flipped over for Michael to get a back view, within a few seconds I felt his finger going back and forth over two small areas in the middle of my back.
" AKs?" I asked with my head to the side, still laying on my stomach.
"No, not these," he said with some concern in his voice. " Stay right there. I just want to take a scraping of them." He put down the liquid nitrogen canister and got an instrument that looked like a thin box cutter which he used to take a sample of each.
" What are they?"
" Well, they could be nothing or they could be melanoma."
"Isn't there anything in between?" I asked, only half jokingly.
" Let's see what comes back from the biopsies, and then we'll know. Let's not worry too much right now," he said as he sealed the samples in two small vials and then continued the cancer hunt until my whole body was checked.
As I was getting dressed I asked Michael how much of a factor does hereditary play.
"It definitely is a strong factor. But it's not the only one. Suntanning plays a much greater roll. Like I said before, this is one of the only cancers that you can easily prevent."
" I know, I know," I said.
"I'll get the biopsies back in around a week. At least stay out of a tanning both until then."
" It's only once a month in the winter, don't worry."
We gave each other a friendly hug, and I waved goodbye as he left the room.
I wasn't worried for one reason. I was banking on the fact that my mother Priscilla is almost 72 years old and still regularly tans with baby oil, and has not gotten skin cancer yet. And there's no way in the world I'm getting melanoma before she gets it. It has to be genetically,and cosmically, impossible.
Michael called me a few days ago to give me the results. He started off by telling me the cells looked strange.
" Strange in a good way?" I asked optimistically.
" I guess so," he chuckled. " Both biopsies came back negative."
" It's just like athlete's foot."
" Then why isn't it called athlete's face? And isn't 'psoriasis' dandruff?"
" Basically."
" How do I have dandruff it I don't have hair? Isn't not having dandruff one of the benefits of being bald?"
" It's pretty common in the eyebrows if the skin is dry."
" I see. God makes me bald but still insists on me having dandruff. That's really fair," I smirked. "So, I 've got dandruff AND fungi on my face. Is there anything else? Are mushrooms going to grow out of my nostrils, or any other crops? "
 | |||||
| This skin condition, known as Fungus Face, has been in my family for centuries. It can be traced back to my ancestor Romeo Glassman, depicted here by the 16th century Italian artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo. This same artist's series of yeast-inspired portraits of baked goods growing out of vaginas were not as well-received. |
The examination always begins at the top of my head. I call this 'the bald man's bull's eye'. It seems to be a landing pad for cancer. As a matter of fact, being bald increases the risk of skin cancer almost as much as smoking an entire pack of cigarettes every day increases the risk of lung cancer (bald smokers are really screwed.)
Michael moves his finger in slow motion to make sure he doesn't miss any small mark or bump. He only found one AK to zap with the nitrogen, which impressed both of us. After he went over the tops of my shoulders, I laid down on the table so he could have a complete frontal view of my entire body. This includes Michael lowering my underwear, which, though done only for a few seconds without any sexual overtones or even undertones from him, is usually my favorite part of the cancer hunt. If I'm not naked at some point during a visit to a doctor, I feel I've not gotten my money's worth. But after finding out my face was filled with dandruff and fungus, I wasn't feeling particularly attractive. All I could think about was getting that face shampoo as quickly as possible.
When I flipped over for Michael to get a back view, within a few seconds I felt his finger going back and forth over two small areas in the middle of my back.
" AKs?" I asked with my head to the side, still laying on my stomach.
"No, not these," he said with some concern in his voice. " Stay right there. I just want to take a scraping of them." He put down the liquid nitrogen canister and got an instrument that looked like a thin box cutter which he used to take a sample of each.
" What are they?"
" Well, they could be nothing or they could be melanoma."
"Isn't there anything in between?" I asked, only half jokingly.
" Let's see what comes back from the biopsies, and then we'll know. Let's not worry too much right now," he said as he sealed the samples in two small vials and then continued the cancer hunt until my whole body was checked.
As I was getting dressed I asked Michael how much of a factor does hereditary play.
"It definitely is a strong factor. But it's not the only one. Suntanning plays a much greater roll. Like I said before, this is one of the only cancers that you can easily prevent."
" I know, I know," I said.
"I'll get the biopsies back in around a week. At least stay out of a tanning both until then."
" It's only once a month in the winter, don't worry."
We gave each other a friendly hug, and I waved goodbye as he left the room.
I wasn't worried for one reason. I was banking on the fact that my mother Priscilla is almost 72 years old and still regularly tans with baby oil, and has not gotten skin cancer yet. And there's no way in the world I'm getting melanoma before she gets it. It has to be genetically,and cosmically, impossible.
Michael called me a few days ago to give me the results. He started off by telling me the cells looked strange.
" Strange in a good way?" I asked optimistically.
" I guess so," he chuckled. " Both biopsies came back negative."
I guess that sometimes it pays off swimming deep in Priscilla's gene pool, especially on very sunny days.
