ink_addicted

A sense of humor and optimism.

Bad news...

It all started back in November 2006, just before Thanksgiving. I had this "thing" on my right arm. It had been there for quite a while, and it wouldn't go away. On the contrary, it kept getting bigger and uglier. Finally I had looked at it long enough. I picked up the phonebook and called a dermatology clinic. The next day I went in and they removed the "thing" and sent it off to pathology. They tried to be reassuring, but I was worried.

Monday morning I get a phone call, "Can you come in NOW?" That didn't sound good. I got there, and it wasn't. Melanoma, and a rather nasty one at that. My whole world changed at that moment. They refered me to an oncologist at the University of Minnesota. The prognosis was not good.

They speak in terms of 5 year survival, almost like the old Soviet Union and their 5 year plans. Based on the type of cancer you get a percentage. Mine was 42. So take 100 people with the same type of cancer, and in 5 years only 42 are still alive.

After a long involved process, I was finally cleared to have the surgery to remove the rest of it (it was deep). I went to see the surgeon for a pre op consultation. About half way through the visit, he reached in the desk drawer, pulled out a small plastic ruler and a green marking pen, and began drawing on my arm.

He said, "It's going to look like a shark took a bite out of you." Truer words were never spoken. The rest of the visit was kind of a blurr.

There was a second part to the surgery. Lymph nodes had to be sampled to see if the cancer had spread. One came back positive, and a second surgery was performed to remove all the lymph nodes from my right armpit. Of course all of those were negative. I wish I had them back. Without them I'm susceptable to a condition called lymph edema. It's a fancy way of saying swelling, potentially severe.

Today marks 3 years since the surgery.



The sense of humor...

A nasty infection and a long healing process later, I felt the need to commemorate my experience. I had never gotten a tattoo, but I knew what I needed. I always say, "I didn't choose the shark, the shark chose me."

We went through the huge flash collection at the local shop. Thousands of images, and only 3 sharks, it was an easy choice. I had my artist add the date and the surgeon's initials.

All of my doctors got a kick out of it when they saw it. The oncologist said he'd never seen any of his patients do that. The dermatologist always asks when the surgery was. I refer him to the shark, and its permanent reminder.

Sometimes people will ask me about the scar on my arm, and I'll tell them, "That's my shark bite." Then I point to the tattoo and say, "That's the shark that bit me." Some people actually fall for that shit, and I'll play with them a little before I tell them what really happened.

This is a case where if I couldn't laugh, I'd cry. Laughing is much better.

I was at the U yesterday, and tried to drop in on the surgeon to say hi, but he wasn't in. I saw his nurse instead and showed her the tattoo. The receptionist used her phone and took a pic to show him. I'll try and catch up with him in May.

Optomism...

Because the prognosis contained an element of time, the 5 year survival thing, I felt I needed some way to mark the passage of years. I thought of an arm band of stars or maybe shark teeth. But in the end I opted for 9 star outlines placed around the shark. I had my artist add the outlines back in September, and color in the first two right then. The third one was colored in last week, while I was there for mom's memorial tattoo.

There is a significance to the colors, but only someone familiar with electronics would notice it. Color, symbol for number, is a system used for marking values of resistors.

black = 0
brown = 1
red = 2
orange = 3
yellow = 4
green = 5
blue = 6
violet = 7
gray = 8
white = 9




I'm actually looking forward to May when I go in for my PET scan and see the oncologist. He hasn't seen the stars yet.

In my mind, having all those outlines waiting to be filled in is a sign of optomism. I want all my colors, and I plan on getting them.

"I'm not dead... I'm getting better"

Monty Python and the Holy Grail