Here’s a bit o’ wisdom I have gathered over the years: When going to a new doctor for the first time, it is best to tone down the loudness of my idiosyncratic fashion. To display my clashion in its most eye-opening forms at a first doctor appointment risks scaring the new doctor. And you know dang well it is not wise to scare a doctor who is in charge of treating your body. I don’t know about you, but I want my doctor to be focused on my ailment, not on trying to decipher the meaning of my attire—at least not until they get to know me, and realize that my normal is not like anybody else’s normal. For this reason, when I had a first appointment with a dermatologist yesterday, I chose a plain-ish blue shirt, a solid-color hat, a doctor-friendly face mask, and a perfectly mellow-but-gorgeous Bow Tie o’ the Day. Yes, I was wearing a pair of golf pants, which my doctor immediately noticed and swooned over. It seemed I had chosen my get-up well.
Anyhoo… For the past three years, I have had a patchy rash on some areas of my torso. The rash is not hideous, and it doesn’t ooze, hurt, or itch. It hasn’t spread anywhere else. It just hasn’t gone away. For the first year, I tried to treat it with various creams, lotions, and gels—convinced it was just something to do with my notoriously dry skin. I figured it would eventually go away. After almost a year of the recalcitrant rash, I knew it was time to make an appointment with a dermatologist. But that’s when the pandemic showed up, and making an appointment with a doctor to deal with a problem that was stubborn and vaguely annoying but otherwise not causing me any discomfort—well, that wasn’t gonna happen. At about the time it was getting easier to get a doc appointment again, my Cranky Hanky Panky flipped out and I had to deal with doctors about that for almost another year. It’s been three months since my pancreas surgery, so I decided it was time to finally make an appointment with a dermatologist. Which I did.
Yesterday was my initial appointment. I have been supremely curious to get to the bottom of what these seemingly innocuous rashy patches on my front and back are all about. The doctor walked into the exam room and—after complimenting me on my golf pants—her eyes lit up at the sight of my rash. She circled my torso with glee. I kid you not: she was grinning and her eyes got bigly. I asked her if she knew what it was, and a bunch of Latin words came out of her mouth. I had never heard of anything she said. I asked her to tell me in English, and she said: “You have a skin fungus. It’s one of four different types. We’ll have to do a biopsy to find out exactly which one it is, then we’ll know how to treat it.” Well, okay then. I was glad to have something close to an answer. Then she took chunks out of my torso in three different spots and sent them off for biopsy. (The doctor will call me with the results in a few days.) My doctor grinned throughout the whole office visit. She was downright giddy. Apparently, what I have is not something she has seen often. The doctor asked if I would let her colleague come in to view my rash, and I was fine with that. So my doc left and the other dermatologist came in—also grinning as she circled me, again and again, with a special light. She was giddy, too. I was a spectacle, and not for my clothing choices. My doc’s colleague said she had never seen this particular skin problem in real life. She spent more time perusing my rash than my own doctor. And then when she was done examining me, she thanked me profusely for letting her look at my stubborn patches. My skin malady is something exotic! Of course, that makes me feel like I’m cool right down to my literal skin. I felt kind of like the Elephant Man. I should have charged admission.
🙀