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Not the news you want to hear, but he was dead-on. Within a year, all these basal cell cancers began showing up, initially on my legs and chest. BCCs don’t necessarily look all that threatening: Mine were small, round, pinkish or reddish areas, sometimes a little raised from the skin. And they might scab up or bleed a little if they got irritated.
BCCs are way more likely than melanoma—they are the most common type of skin cancer, and cancer in general, in people—and are usually considered easy to treat. But when you have as many as I had…. Let’s just say “easy” is not the word. My treatment was topical chemotherapy, which is medication you apply to the skin yourself. Now that would usually mean “spot treating” the BCC areas twice a day for about two weeks. But because I had so many cancers firing up at once, my treatment course would ultimately stretch far beyond that.
For one, I had to do the chemo twice a day for two months. Plus, my doctor had me treat one area of my body at a time—and only during the winter. That sounded really weird to me at first. But after I began treatment, I quickly got it: Topical chemo can make you feel like you’re on fire. So there I was, in the middle of winter, wearing shorts and a tank top because my body was a furnace. In the car, I’d have to roll the window down and freeze everybody else to keep myself from roasting. I did one leg one winter, then the other the following winter, and my chest the following one. Three winters of treatment. But it didn’t end there.
Like I said, I’ve been getting regular skin exams for years. And they’ve caught a lot of additional BCCs, including ones on my arms, shoulders and upper back, and my head. In some cases, my dermatologist has done a “shave and destroy,” where they scrape the tumor off then use electrical heat to kill off any cancer cells that are still kicking around, and to seal the wound.
Amid all these BCC fireworks, I also got another diagnosis. It was a second melanoma, on my right leg. I was 48. This time, though, I’d actually spotted the melanoma myself. I mean, I didn’t know it was melanoma until my doctor biopsied it. But, having developed a keen eye by that time, I knew when something wasn’t right. This melanoma was nothing but a tiny dark dot, like the mark of a ballpoint pen, but it seemed to be getting darker over time. So I pointed it out to my doctor. Thankfully, we caught it early and, again, I only needed surgery.
One question none of my doctors can answer is, why? Why would someone like me have all these skin cancers from such a young age? Another question no one can answer: How many times can you get “lucky” and have all your skin cancers caught early before your luck runs out? (I have lots of questions. I think I drive my doctors bonkers.)
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