Oh, come on, you know it was a Moleskine notebook.

On March 12th I went to the dermatologist for a full-body mole check.  I like my dermatologist. I think I like him primarily because he's so good I've never actually met him; I've only met his minions. The minions wear extremely starchy coats and seem to do a lot of frightened scattering, two other factors I find medically credible.

Years ago I went to another dermatologist. She wore a turtleneck and a stethoscope, both of which bothered me. A stethoscope? Seriously? Exactly how many people have you needed to revive today in the course of doling out Micro Retin-A samples? And why can't I see your neck? What's under there? You're worrying me. This in addition to the fact that I actually met with her in person a number of times, always a bad sign when on the lookout for quality medical care.

During one of our appointments she checked up on the four thousand moles on my back.

"Hmmm," she said, "this one sounds strange."

We then decided the best course of action would be for her to dive into the center of my back with a hacksaw, remove the mole along with an acre and a half of surrounding tissue, and then sew me back up with some nylon rope she found in a lobster trap. With her eyes closed.

That mole was referred to as both "precancerous" and "abnormal" and, four years later after I'd regained most of the feeling between my shoulder blades, it was largely forgotten.

In the meantime I changed doctors. Please see above.

Last month I stripped down during my appointment and led my jittery minion on an exciting and awkward tour of my bone white epidermis. I asked about specific moles, at times referencing written notations I'd made in a small notebook. I referred to each mole as "him", as in, "what about this guy, does he look weird to you?" Or "how about him, he's kinda puffy."

Everything checked out. All my guys were in line, so to speak. I wasn't terribly surprised, I tend to take a prison lockdown approach to my skin; if all my guys behave themselves and stay where they're supposed to be, they get one hour of outside time a month. The rest of the time I wear a chainmail shark suit underneath a ski bib.

A couple of weeks after my appointment I was standing in the bathroom washing my face when Randy came up behind me.

"Why is your ear black?" he asked. He asked it in the only way you can ask another person why their ear is black-- rudely.

I got defensive, obviously, I mean it was probably just dirt or a leech or something like usual, no need to freak out at me with the judgment.

I flipped my right ear around to get a look at the back and HOLY SHIT WHY IS MY EAR BLACK?

"Ohhhhh, what the fuck is that."

Randy: "Is it moving?"

No.

Randy: "Call the doctor."

I did, I called the doctor. And I got a regional switchboard, thank God, because what I really needed right then was a sign of medical competency and nothing screams competence louder than a scheduling office three hundred miles away. I was in good hands.

After another, more thorough investigation, I deduced that a tiny mole on the top of my ear- a very tiny mole, maybe 5mm-- had gone rogue and was now off the goddamn grid. The entire top of my ear was now covered in black filmy-looking skin. It didn't have a texture but it looked scaly and weird and like every poster you've ever seen in a doctor's office about skin cancer.

That was a Thursday. My appointment, my new appointment, was scheduled for the following Monday. April 12th. Here's a synopsis of everything Randy and I talked about on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday:

How to make a prosthetic ear out of plumber's caulk.
How to make a prosthetic ear out of Scotch tape.
How to make a prosthetic ear out of paper mâché.
How to make a prosthetic ear out of a banana.

I can't make dinner tonight, I have cancer ear.

ME: Kiss my cancer ear.
RANDY: No.
ME: DO IT.
RANDY: Ew.
ME: Do it or I'll command it to spread to your ear while you're sleeping.
RANDY: You're annoying when you have cancer.

I sold zombies at an art show Saturday afternoon and my friend Stacey came down to say hey.

"So I have this thing on my ear," I started, flipping my ear around so she could see.

Her eyes got huge.

"Erin. That's totally cancer."

"I know."

"No seriously. That's cancer."

"I KNOW."

"Do you want a hat?"


Monday morning my starchy minion was confused.

"I just saw you!" she said.

I didn't even say anything, I just flipped my ear around. My new calling card.

She rustled over to look.

"Wow," she breathed, "that was not here before."

It wasn't. It was absolutely not there exactly one month beforehand. I know this because we'd actually had a conversation about, quote, "this little one on your ear".  I also know it because I do actually look behind my ears periodically and not just when I think there might be a grasshopper back there.

She removed it immediately, obviously, and sent it to the lab. The results were back last week and, just as she and I and Randy and Stacey and every single other person who wrinkled their nose at it thought, it was cancer. Superficial spreading melanoma, the most common type of melanoma. But mine had moved faaaaaast. Frighteningly fast.

Right after she instructed me in no uncertain terms not to Google "melanoma" if I wanted to sleep in anything other than a fetal position, she informed me that the lesion she removed was .3mm deep. Lesions that grow to one millimeter deep or greater are at risk of spreading into the lymph nodes and throughout the body. So I'm good there. I'm seeing a specialist soon to remove the remnants of the melanoma since the borders weren't clean, and I'm looking forward to that because having a whole bunch of skin cut off the top and back of your ear is awesome. I can confirm that now, having just had a small taste of ear skin removal myself. At first you might be all silver linings and bright sides and shit, like, "hey! At least it's on the back of my ear where no one can see it and it won't bother me at all." And then some minion cuts a big swath of skin off your ear bone and suddenly you remember you wear glasses and have hair and pretty much everything you do all day long involves your stupid ear, plus you look like half an elf.

But hey, I'll take it. I feel like I just won the lottery, frankly, because the odds of having found this and handled it so quickly before it could do any real damage are not in my favor. I had just gotten a clean bill of health from the dermatologist so I wasn't exactly suspicious about anything, and I was lying before when I said I check behind my ears periodically; I have checked behind my ears exactly three times in my life: once when I got my ears pierced, again to free a moth, and then a third time last week when my husband probably saved my life by being snarky in the bathroom.

The only downside here really is that now I'm required to see the actual doctor every three months for the next five years. And then every six months for three years after that. I'm not a hundred percent sure I'm on board with this kind of common, lackadaisical doctoring. Maybe he wheels around a defibrillator all day or something, that might put me at ease.