Charles Durning Carroll

I have a spot on my head that itches–it’s near the crown of my head, on the right hand side–from what I can see it looks pinkish. I can’t see the proper dimensions because my hair covers it. About seven months ago I went to a dermatologist who said it was nothing, but something feels raised, almost as if there is a significant ridge there. There is also a slight itching but no nodule or ulceration.  Last Wednesday I also developed what I believe to be a basal cell carcinoma on my right cheek. Far be it from me to self-diagnose, but something doesn’t feel right (I acknowledge to being prone to anxiety), and in my worst fears this spot is a rather large amelanotic melanoma of the scalp. I have an appointment this coming week with the GP and I am going to ask for a referral to a new dermatologist. I am 53, married thirteen years, with a 3 year old daughter and a new son on the way.

Let’s say that my worst fears are right? What then? The prognosis for these isn’t very good–for Stages 3/4 five year survival rates drop to about 45%. Again, let’s assume the worst. Given where my son is–still in my wife’s belly, how much time would I want? Three years is better than two if I can get it. The side effects of treatment and medication sound horrible, I’m not sure how I would get through them and be a father and husband all at the same time. It would probably mean losing my job(s) as a university teacher and administrator. I’ve just started the admin job and I enjoy it. It would make me feel very sad to have to leave it so soon after starting it. I only began last September.

Let’s give me a few years (no more). What would I want to do? I’m not sure. Keep writing here, perhaps, to maintain my sanity and try to bring some semblance of order. Could I volunteer somewhere just to get out of the house and stop feeling sorry for myself?

Could I find a way to accept dying? That’s really hard. I’ve been reading about Paul Kalanathi and Julie Yip Williams–two writers who died young of cancer. I would be older by a decade or more, but I’m not sure I would have an easy time making sense of death. Intellectually I can accept (and try to work mentally with) the idea that death is merely the mirror image of life–all things die–people, animals, plants, even our own earth and universe will have a death–a going dark. And this darkness is the necessity out of which new life begins. Thinking this way really helps, and perhaps that sense of connection to a universal process is the best I can hope for.

Another approach I try is not to hate the cancer, (if that is indeed what it is) but to acknowledge it as its own life–something is growing. I may not like that thing, and it may kill me, but it has its own purpose, it’s own reason for being that I cannot fathom. Everything that exists has a certain “ought,” a way in which it alters the universe, and perhaps my imagined cancer needs in a sense to exist. Perversely, just as I have created my children, I have also created this cancer. Just as they need me, so too this cancer needs me to survive.