My diagnosis

I’m very fair skinned, of Irish decent. Having spent ten years, in my 20s, living at the beach in Southern California, I was not surprised to get a biopsy result telling me that a spot on the back of my left hand was positive for skin cancer. I always suspected that this would happen someday. (I turned 65 in July, and my type of skin cancer (Squamous cell carcinoma—SCC) often affects people in their 70s.) Even though, I wasn’t surprised, and I was pretty sure that it wasn’t life-threatening, just hearing the word—cancer—took my breath away. The nurse who called with the results told me to stay on-the-line and to make an appointment to have the spot removed. She also told me that Squamous cell was more likely to recur than the more common Basal cell and that my tumor was very deep. This sounded ominous—not something I wanted to hear. My appointment, for a simple excision to remove it, was made for the following week.