Staycation Part Deux

The Staycation continues and what a glorious week it has been! In addition to hitting the gym and working on my fitness, I engaged in activities of leisure such as a blissful manicure and pedicure combo, happy hour at the Happy Gnome, shopping and lunch with friends. Ahhhhh . . . the good life.

When one has such a week of luxurious, carefree time on their hands, it is important to take advantage and attend to some medical and dental check-ups. Perfect health and wellness being right next to Godliness on the "Top 10 Aspirational Goals List" of 2008, I had to oblige and do my part. If you are wondering what #3 is, well, let's just say it might involve plastic surgery and a whole lot of suction . . . not going there right now. I'll leave that for my next Staycation.

In my quest for the holy grail of health, I took my first ever trip to the dermatologist. While I have never had the need or seen a reason to go to a skin specialist before, I was startled out of complacency by stories from friends and friends of friends. A fair-skinned lass with a sad history of blistering sunburns and biological predisposition to moles and freckles sealed the deal. When I made the appointment, I wasn't sure what to ask for? Should I request a check-up? A skin review? An ala carte special peel and graft? I just didn't have the lingo down at all. A colleague suggested I schedule a full body scan which, simply put, is a head to toe look at my epidermis. No stone was left unturned. After a thorough exam, I came to realize that I had a lot more going on in the skin department than I could have ever dreamed possible. What's that you say Dr. Cho? I have a touch of psoriasis on my scalp? Hmmm. I just thought it was a dry patch of skin. Guess not. Seasonal eczema on my hands? Check. Dermatitis with a "touch" of Rosacea on my face? Yep. Got it. Anything else? Well, just for fun let's throw in a couple suspicious looking moles that had to be removed. Good gravy and biscuits people. I'm a walking dermatological case study. Luckily the good doctor didn't diagnose Leprosy. This would have put me over the edge. No severely disfiguring and painful disease from biblical times, thankyouverymuch.

OK, so the whole mole removal thing was pretty easy. If others out there have experienced it, they can attest to this fact. A little shot of local anaesthetic and I didn't feel a thing. There was one slightly disturbing part -- the moment when my tiny wound was cauterized and the pungent smell of my own burning flesh hit my nostrils. Not good. Even worse was the thought, later provided by my darling sister . . . "just think, that was what you would smell if you were ever burned alive!" Great. Thanks!!

After my procedure, I had this compulsion to do a Google search on 'mole removal.' See I'm a bit of a hypochondriac and am always looking for the symptoms, signs and cautionary tales related to diseases and conditions which may or may not befall me. In my quick Internet query, I found a few interesting sites. One of which boasted this picture:

Ahhhhhhh!!!!! I meant mole on my skin, not mole in my garden. This was incredibly frightening. For a mere instant, I was worried my harmless skin moles may erupt and burst with sharp teethed, pointy nosed vermin like this. My anxiety released upon realizing Google was just confused. Whew. Relief. Then I pictured the movie Caddyshack. A golf course groundskeeper, played by a young Bill Murray, dueling it out with a wily gopher. In my mind, the gopher was transformed into his burrowing cousin, the mole. The mole became the small, dark dots on my skin and Dr. Cho was Bill Murray trying to eradicate them from reproducing and spreading their vermin seed across my torso, neck, arms and legs. AAAHHHHHHHHHHH.

The whole skin slicing, flesh burning, Internet searching, mole imagining, Caddyshack remembering was super trippy. Must have been a lethal combination of anaesthetic and Starbucks mocha in my system. Careful not to mix these boys and girls. It leads to bad, bad visuals.