Skin Deep

by Charity

Last week we made an appointment with a dermatologist.  All things considered, this is a major step forward, although I hesitate to pat myself on the back for anything, because anything that involves stepping out of our comfort zone is usually (at least in part) Allega's doing.  If it were up to me, I'd stay under a rock and suffer.

We have a dark spot about the size of a penny below our right eye.  It's been there for at least 10 years.  It started out as two or three small spots and evolved into a blob.  The blob has cause our already abysmal self-esteem to plummet even further, and we have refused to be photographed during recent years.

A couple of years ago we were in the company of brother number one and his family.  We could have sworn we heard our older niece (now a senior in high school) say that she had been to a dermatologist and had spots removed from her face.  Could this really be done?  We mentioned it to our T back then, but we weren't ready to act on it.

So last week we called B1 to verify the timing on the conversation from a couple of years ago.  He said that our niece had been to a dermatologist, but never for the purpose that we described.  SIL and niece verified B1's answer.

Now, our immediate family are not the type to gaslight us (except our late uncle, but that's another story); we don't hallucinate, and we're not psychotic.  Maybe our niece was talking about having a different procedure.  Or maybe what we heard was from one of her millennial cousins.  All we know is that we didn't imagine what we heard.

Our paternal grandmother had a dark mole to the outer side of her left eye.  It was about the same size as our dark spot.  In her day there was little that could be done about such a thing, and we remember thinking that we hoped that we'd never end up like that.

Karma?  :-/

[Various others:  NO.]

Our grandmother may not have been able to do anything about her situation, but we can.  The dermatologist appointment is for January 21.  It's just a consult, but hopefully the next step will be the removal procedure, and hopefully that will go well.

Sometimes I don't think it's a good idea to hope.  I'll let the others hope for me.