The rabbit hole is scary

A little over a week ago, I was getting out of the shower and I saw something that unsettled me; a dime sized black patch on my back.

I had never noticed it before and, because it was the size it was, I was surprised I hadn’t seen it before.

I have a few moles on my body but, honestly, there aren’t that many. I had noticed a few skin tags popping up around my neck but I knew them to be fairly harmless, so I paid them scant attention.

I couldn’t say the same thing about this creature on my back.

Questions started popping into my head as I examined it the best I could.

How long had it been there?

How fast was it growing?

Was it something to be concerned about?

After getting dressed, I went to the computer and put in the words” brown scaly patch of skin on back.

I won’t go as far as to say that it was a mistake to do so but reading the results did me no favors.

It popped up with information on melanoma.

The first thing I read was that any person who lived in California, Hawaii or Australia faced strong risk.

Hawaii and Australia? I lived in both places and I definitely was in the sun all the time.

Thus my journey down the rabbit hole started.

I felt the gnawing fear that I could have this deadly skin cancer. Not only had I lived in those tropical places, but I could put many equator countries as places I had visited and often did not wear a shirt.

Looking at pictures of melanoma did nothing to ease my fears. The way melanoma shows up is fairly varied, with patches of skin being different colors. The black patch on my back certainly had attributes of the pictures I was looking at.

Then continuing my education further, I discovered that it is a very aggressive cancer and could become deadly in a period of less than three months.

Three months?

My mind started thinking that could very well have been the time when this skin patch started. Worse, I started discovering more patches of scaly skin on my right arm. I even had one on my ankle.

I read over way too much about skin cancer and its deadliness. I couldn’t help but become somewhat terrified as I read that it often went to the brain and bone marrow.

Brain cancer? Bone marrow cancer?

It sounded horrible.

I have to acknowledge it did not help that two close friends from high school passed away from cancer in the past two years. I watched one be so brave for 10 years with stage four colon cancer. My other buddy had seemed to beat it showing no signs after successfully having it all removed five years ago and then, in less than eight months last year, the cancer came back and he was gone.

Another person I know through a friend has just gone through several operations to control stage four liver cancer. It has recently gone to the lymph nodes and the prognosis is not good.

I knew I had to find out what I had.

I made an appointment in Fort Collins with a dermatologist. I could have had one closer, in Laramie, if I had been willing to wait a couple weeks.

A couple weeks?

The internet said melanoma could be eating my body away at a rate that would be foolish to wait.

I only talked about the mole with a few people. All were supportive in getting it checked out and did their best to tell me not freak myself out until I had it diagnosed.

I listened to the words, but the more information the internet gave me, the more I couldn’t help but have a feeling of real dread.

I have always said it is a historical fact nobody beats death and dying will eventually happen. I have always hoped it would just going to sleep and I definitely prefer not to go because of terrible a disease.

Melanoma is a terrible disease as the internet informed me. There was so much information on different medical sites that, after three days of internet reading, I made myself stop reading anything to do with melanoma.

The information overload was getting to me.

I realize the internet has its usefulness, but it is way too easy to let it take over a person’s way of getting knowledge.

Once I stopped looking, there really was an ability to calm myself and wait for what the doctor said.

When I finally did get down to Fort Collins four days after stopping my internet education, the doctor took one look at my back and said it was a genetic marker my parents had bestowed on me.

He froze it off along with the other patches that were going to present me with similar moles.

When I told the doctor how effectively I had made myself nervous by reading all the information on the internet, he said it was common.

My lesson learned, is that the internet, and its vast amount of sites with knowledge, needs to be taken in moderation.

Going down a rabbit hole just isn’t worth the angst.

Glad I learned this truth if I ever find myself trying to self diagnose again.