Dentist and dermatologists and a trip to Boston, oh my

Silverwood Terrace scenery

Well I made an appointment to go to the dentist. That is happening today. They said people are coming in. At the same time as getting my chipped tooth fixed, I might gather up the courage to say I lost my mouth guard. I must have thrown it in the wash with the sheets but I don't know what happened from there. Or maybe the gremlin took it.

But last week, instead of going to the dentist, I went to the dermatologist...in Boston.

This happened in the strangest way. There was a little dark, raised spot near my knee. To be honest, in a twisted effort to prove to myself that it wasn't melanoma, because it was darker than my squamous cell cancers, I picked at it. Yes, I know, that is weird and gross. I got left with a little scab that didn't go away. You can STOP here if you don't want any more details.

To continue, though, as I have said, I have three major dermatologists, and even more, if you count the ones I have seen when my regular ones aren't available. I showed it to the people at Mohs surgery back in the real world before the pandemic, and one of the doctors there said it just looked like a scab. Next, I had a Face Time appointment with one of my other dermatologists. She said that if I was coming in, she would biopsy it, but since nobody was going in for this kind of thing, we would just leave it alone. The Mohs people like to be in on the loop, and asked to see a photo. So I sent them a photo. They day that they got it – last Tuesday – I got a call from a nurse at the office. She said to come in the next day to get it biopsied. COME IN TO BOSTON? I asked. Yes, she said, come in at 3 p.m.

Naturally I was hesitant, as Boston is a hotspot. My friendly personal chauffeur was also not hot on the idea. He didn't want me to go. I do everything they tell me to do, so I was going to go, one way or another. It was out of the question to contact the crazy driver pool. I asked Katie. She said she would do it but that would undo all the work we have done in seeing each other at a social distance, because we're not in the same germ circle. Duh. I thought of driving myself, but I was going to get an excision, and a stitch, in my knee, so that wouldn't have been a good idea. My friendly driver took me.

The doctor was also going to do something about the non-healing spot on my thumb. So there would probably be two biopsies.

I made a phone call to a local dermatologist. I could come in but it would be a week before I could get an appointment. When things settle down I'm going to see if I can get a dermatologist at Cooley Dickinson, since it is in the same network, Partners, as Brigham and Women's.

Meanwhile, I sent a photo to my regular dermatologist and gave her the news that I was going in for a biopsy. She said it didn't look like anything serious. Still, my mind raced. I thought that someone telling me to go into Boston, on a day's notice, meant that they suspected something serious.

So the next day, off we went to Faulkner Hospital, in Jamaica Plain.

It was an easy drive, and quiet at the hospital. Someone came out from behind a partition and took my temperature via my forehead. Then another person passed me a mask on a long stick. I took off my mast and put on the new one. I was in the elevator with only one other person. The office was quiet, with nobody in the waiting room. The nurse said they were seeing about five people a day.

When Dr. Schmults came in and looked at the leg, she said it didn't look serious. She said some word that I can't remember, but after she biopsied it she said it looked either like a seborrheic keratosis or a mole that was traumatized. (Did she say a traumatized mole? I don't remember. Flash back to the picking...) She also took a nice little piece out of the knuckle on my thumb. When she came at me with the needle, I said the thumb was one of my least favorite places for anesthesia, due to the lack of fat. But I had forgotten how good she is at it. She does tiny little jabs instead of one big needle, so that after the first one you don't really feel it.

I haven't gotten the results.

Happy asparagus

The knee has one dissolving stitch in it, but the thumb doesn't have anything. It's hard to keep it dry, with all the hand washing. Yesterday it didn't look so good, so I put antibiotic ointment on it and kept making sure to put a dry bandage on it.

The knee didn't hurt at all afterwards. The thumb hurt a lot. I had to lay off typing for a day.

A couple of days later a went for a run. Maybe I shouldn't have done it, because it was too late in the day when I decided that I was up for it. It was hot, and I was dragging. Yesterday I decided that it was better to do a shorter distance well than to do a longer distance poorly.

The morning walks are nice. I go along the golf course and look at the trees in bloom. The golfers are out, making me wonder when tennis will come back. In tennis, there is concern about touching a ball that someone else has touched, and if the person has the virus without knowing it, then you getting it from the ball. Some people are saying to maybe just play singles. One friend said she heard that you mark your own balls and only touch those. It seems a little far fetched. A friend from the Canoe Club sent a funny video of different ways that people are playing tennis at home. We could hit a ball around in my driveway, but somehow the scenery there, with the dumpster and all, doesn't inspire me to want to do it.


I bought some plants from an outdoor sale on Route 47. My friend isn't happy about going around people, but I have to do some things, though nothing inside. I feel that outside is safe if people are wearing masks and it is not crowded. It fit all these criteria. On the way back, I passed several asparagus stands. I got a bunch from a wagon in front of a farmhouse. When I drove into the back to turn around, an old chocolate Lab named Bailey greeted me. A kid came out of the barn with two kittens in his arms. It felt normal to choose from some bunches of asparagus on the wagon and put my money in the box.

Little boosts.

Another skin cancer, another crazy driver

My squamous cell radar regarding my skin, like my parking radar in New York, continues to be accurate.

Before I went to Faulkner Hospital on Monday for the Mohs consult about the spot on my right jawbone, Ellen, the physician's assistant at the Kraft Family Blood Donor Center, said she didn't like a raised flaky spot on my cheek. I had noticed a spot at the top of my nose, right where you might put your pointer finger if you were deep in thought, and felt that the flakiness there might signal a problem.

These are not the kind of signs usually associated with skin cancer. But upon looking into it, I saw that the Mayo clinic described the signs of a squamous cell cancer this way: "a flat lesion with a scaly, crusted surface." The signs of basal cell cancer and melanoma are different.

So when I had my appointment I pointed out the two new spots. The dermatologist wasn't worried about Ellen's spot, which will be taken care of by my upcoming face fry, or photodynamic therapy, but she did biopsy "my" spot. When I got the biopsy report during the week, I learned it was what I suspected. Luckily these have all been in situ – on the skin. I got a message saying that I could either apply the chemotherapy cream I already have or wait to get it frozen when I return for the Mohs. I am applying the cream.

Do you remember Kenny?

The driver who stopped late at night so the other passenger could get her diabetes medicine? Do you remember the kerfuffle that ensued? Well, wouldn't you know it, another problem occurred on my way home, exacerbated by the pain in the biopsied spot as the numbing medicine wore off. When his dispatcher called to tell him to pick up a patient in Worcester and bring her home to Springfield, I heard him say that his passenger (me) wouldn't like it and he was going to have to listen to me yelling all the way home.

I said I wasn't going to yell but since the last time we had driven all the way to East Springfield AND stopped for the medicine would he get off at Exit 7 and take me home first because I was in pain. He said why would he do that because he lives in Chicopee and it was more convenient for him to go to Springfield first and then to South Hadley.

Oh and did I mention that previously he had been talking on his (hand held) phone and telling a friend that he was annoyed that he had to lock his gun in his glove compartment?

He said he was the driver and the order of dropping off was up to him and I had to EARN the right to say when I wanted to get dropped off and so on and so forth in a continuing rant.

You are probably thinking don't get into it with these drivers, but he was taunting me and I got hysterical like the last time I was in the car with him. We took our detour through Worcester. The woman who he picked up at a hospital got in the front seat. When she heard me sniffling, she asked, "You all right, honey"?

Apparently she had had her own problems with MART after waiting for hours and hours to get picked up. When I told her that I really needed to get home, she said she had been waiting so long that she didn't care if she waited a little longer so he should go ahead and drop me off first.

Kenny turned around and said, "See"?

See what?

I got over myself after she started telling me about her own problems. Her hospital visit didn't sound serious – aspiration of what sounded like a non-cancerous cyst – but her health history was.

 She said she was a recovered crack cocaine addict and alcoholic. She said Worcester was a drug haven and she had to get out of there but she still went back for medical care.

It dawned on me that she was the same woman who had demanded we stop for her medicine. I hadn't seen her that well in the dark, but the pieces began to add up. She must have been having a really bad night because on Monday she was a different person.

She said she had neuropathy in her feet (due to diabetes). I said I had it from chemo. We found that we both take gabapentin and that nothing totally makes the pins and needles go away. Hers sounds worse. We showed each other photos of our children. Then, it being the day before Super Tuesday, she brought up the election.

"I'm going to vote for my Hillary," she said. All of her people in Georgia were going to also.

She said that while George Bush was flying over New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Bill and Hillary were there taking care of the babies. She doesn't like Hillary as much as she liked Bill, but, she said, "He has her back."

You can find solidarity in the most unlikely places.

People ask why I continue to take these rides. The answer is that some of drivers are fine, and the cost/benefit ratio still weighs in favor of the benefit of not having to do the driving myself.

I am going to call the company and say I will not get in a car again with Kenny.

And I'm going to drive myself the next two times anyway since I have a double-header on both ECP weeks.

This week I'm staying at Margaret's on Wednesday because I have my regular check-up with Dr. Alyea on Thursday. Next week I'll stay at Diane's Tuesday night because I have the Mohs that day and ECP the next day.

I'm lucky to have my sister and my sister/friend so close to Dana-Farber!