Stereotype

I grew up in California and my sister and I spent days in the pool, never with any sunscreen because we were the brown-as-a-berry type girls.  Also, it was the 1970s.  In my adulthood, I have reaped the rewards of this lifestyle in the form of the occasional spot of skin cancer.  It's the basal cell type; inconvenient and unattractive but not really dangerous.

This summer, I had a spot scraped off my nose.  The resulting pathology showed that the margins were still funky.  This spot would require a Mohs procedure, which is as much fun as it sounds.  I underwent that procedure on Tuesday of this week.  An 8 mm chunk on the surface of my nose is gone (as is the skin cancer).

Having casually assumed that everything would be just fine (the first scrape healed beautifully), I was rather horrified at this development.  A plastic surgeon is in order.  Conveniently, I live in New Jersey, and we are awash in cosmetic surgery opportunities.  And so I'm seeing a guy next week and now I've become a New Jersey stereotype: a woman of a certain age with a plastic surgeon's number on her phone.  I'll let you know when it goes to speed dial.