This was to ensure that skin transplanted from my thigh could be grafted onto my scalp. Once the cancer was removed and my scalp had healed, I underwent a cranioplasty to re-form the skull. The procedure keeps repeating until there is no more evidence of cancer.Īs you’re scalped - you’re alert, but a local anesthetic numbs the top of your head - you must wait until the surgeon gets the all-clear that no more cancer remains.īut that was just the beginning. If there is, the next layer of tissue is shaved off and tested. That’s the technique that allows a surgeon to slice off one layer of tissue at a time (conserving as much tissue as possible) and then test whether there is any more cancer present. And because the cancer had covered a nearly two-inch square portion of my scalp, I would need Mohs surgery. Although the doctor told me it rarely metastasizes and is seldom fatal, it needed to be removed. Sure enough, the test came back positive for the slowest-growing form of skin cancer, basal cell. It took all of five seconds for my daughters’ dermatologist to look at my scalp and determine I needed a biopsy. So my wife - smart woman - suggested getting a second opinion. Even as the blotchy area grew, he remained convinced it was eczema. He believed I was suffering from eczema and prescribed a topical cream. Thirty years later, I began noticing reddish, scaly blotches on my scalp, so I went to my dermatologist. Rather than golden brown, I turned lobster red, sporting the mother of all sunburns, one so bad, in fact, that I spent the rest of the trip coating my back, chest and head with various ointments in a futile effort to lessen the sting and keep sheets of skin from peeling off - even from my scalp. But I was 21 years old, and we know that a college student's judgment isn’t always spot on. What possessed me, a fair-skinned guy, to slather myself in baby oil and lie out in the Florida sun, I still can’t say. During a college-break camping trip, a group of us decided to abandon the Chicago chill and head south. In the spring of 1975, what seemed like a good idea turned out to be a colossal blunder. My affinity for hats was not a fashion statement rather, it had its roots in the foolishness of youth, which came back to bite me decades later.Īs summer hits its peak, consider this a cautionary tale for sun worshipers. When I updated my Facebook profile photo recently - the first without a hat - I was inundated with comments from friends and former colleagues who had never seen me without a hat or couldn’t remember the last time they had. ![]() The hat has become a virtual appendage, more a part of my identity than I had realized. I’ve been “the hat guy.” In fact, I’m typing these words wearing my Red Sox cap, probably my favorite from my burgeoning cap collection. For the past seven years, few people have seen the top of my head.
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