april fools day on me.

so, i suppose it was ye ol' mother nature who played a trick on me this year. out of nowhere appeared a strange and unsightly growth under my arm. right in a spot where there had been a small growth/bump/thingy for years. i always thought it was scar-tissue from one of my zillion surgeries. jason noticed the dramatic change first. suddenly, it looked like someone had put a cigar out on my chest. it looked freakish enough that we decided to photograph it. just in case. good thing, too. cause by the next day it had changed. grown. looked uglier. meaner. and i was left to ponder the possibilities. skin cancer again? necrotic tissue. some horrific flesh eating disease most likely transmitted from an alien goat?

with kindly suggestions and gentle guidance, i decided to go to the ER. in case i was in need of quarantine or an exorcism or something. but thanks to my cancer x 2 history, the ER staff here in farm-land really didn't want to touch me. and i think my proud-flesh scared them a tad. so they insisted i drive out to the big city to see my surgical oncologist.

i hadn't been to the oncologist since i moved to belgrade. i really hoped those days were behind me. but here i was on a road trip to cancerland, the treatment center where i had spent far too much of my time in the past.

my oncologist really didn't know what to make of the whole anomaly. perhaps aggravated scar tissue or a benign growth that had ruptured. she ran some blood work, thankfully. i had been wanting a CBC anyway. you know, just for sh*ts & grins.

but as the title of this post alludes, this was all just some cruel prank. mother nature decided to "get me". blood tests came back fine. since my onc didn't really think it was the big C, i have yet to find out what this armpit creation is. it has morphed once again. it's not nearly as putrid looking. i've been keeping up on photo documentation. because, i am a photographer. and well, i'm half-nuts. maybe i'll have an exhibit of mini-me someday.

4/8/09 update: i am scheduled to have a tiny tiny biopsy done at my onc's office on 4/13. probably nothing. but i'd rather know fo sho.