The Black Spot

Nancy is a lovely fair skinned blonde; and because of this, she and direct sunlight do not get along well. It’s often humorous to see pictures of the two of us vacationing in tropical climates – we are the ones under the sun umbrella with cover-up on.

One day I noticed Nancy had developed a dark mole on her forearm. Tucked away in our medicine cabinet we had one of those little paper cards with pictures of various skin cancers printed on it in color. The mole on Nancy’s arm looked an awful lot like the photo example of Melanoma. She was scheduled to see her physician shortly anyway so I reminded her to have her doctor have a look at that mole.

When she came home from her exam I asked what her doctor had said about the mole. “The doctor said it was nothing; she told me that she had done her residency in dermatology and for me to not be concerned about the mole.”

But I was concerned... very concerned, in fact! For one thing, the picture of the Melanoma example on the card could have been taken from the mole on Nancy’s arm. So if what was on Nancy’s are was NOT Melanoma, then of what use is the stupid card? Troubled by this, I asked Nancy to go back to her doctor and have the mole removed anyway.

Nancy agreed and again visited her doctor. They discussed doing a simple a “punch biopsy” but then opted to allay everyone’s concerns (especially mine) and have the whole mole completely removed.

A week later we were out driving in the car, Nancy became very quiet. Then said she needed to tell me something; the results of the biopsy had come came back – Melanoma!

We immediately scheduled Nancy with a dermatologist who promptly carved a deeper chunk out of her arm. Nancy ended her relationship with that general practitioner.

Being scientifically trained, I have a healthy respect for professionals, experts in their fields. It is why we consult lawyers, accountants or landscape specialists rather than try to bang everything out ourselves. It is a perfectly reasonable approach; we recognize that these people have devoted full attention into their interest of study. We correctly rely on the fact that they are the consummate experts in their respective fields.

However, part of being of a Skeptic is to not “blindly” accept the testimony of all “experts” unquestionably. At some level we need to have at least rudimentary knowledge to assess the expert opinions given to us, seeing if they match up with our internal “reasonableness meter”. If the information doesn’t, then it is incumbent upon us to request clarification or justification from the expert until we are satisfied that their expertise is indeed sound.

I am sure there are many people would have just accepted their doctor’s opinion thinking, “Well, she’s the expert”. But I know that had we not questioned the advice we were given, we would have faced a very different and unpleasant outcome. Would we have still celebrated a 25 year anniversary?

The health of journalism.

I picked up a “Time” magazine in the doctor’s office waiting room today. Remarkably it was a current issue; most waiting room magazines are, well… old. Anyway, the big story in “Time” was about John McCain’s health. More specifically, the story was an analysis of how John McCain’s health could affect his run for office. Several polls were cited in the article in order to assess public confidence in whether McCain was healthy enough to be president.

And what exactly was McCain’s serious health issue? Eight years ago he had a melanoma removed from his skin. It’s usually a five-minute procedure which is then treated with a band aid! Why his took five-hours is anybody’s guess – open heart surgery takes five hours. I’ll wager the reported got minutes and hours mixed up. Journalists often have trouble keeping their facts straight.

Yes I know… melanoma can be a deadly cancer if it is not treated. My wife had such an incident. In fact, her primary care physician misdiagnosed the spot on her arm as a harmless mole. As is becoming all too unsettlingly common, I again found my medial knowledge superior to that of many physicians, so we had a dermatologist remove the mole. The pathology report came back: malignant melanoma! (My wife doesn’t see that physician any more, by the way).

It really pains me when journalists are so bent on doing journalism that they create a story where there is none. And John McCain’s fitness to be commander-in-chief is in no way threatened or impaired by virtue of The Media crafting of a Health issue”. Now I can list a number of other reasons which, in my opinion, cause me to believe John McCain is a less than desirable choice to be president. But his having the foresight to have a “potentially” dangerous mole scratched off his skin is not one of them.

I understand that "Time" has magazines to sell. I also know that journalists need to write just as fish need to fly and birds need to swim. [Yes, I know what I said] But often there is no story there – and there is no issue with McCain’s fitness for the presidency here, at least, where his health is concerned.

Here is a story suggestion for “Time”, (or any other journalist out there, for that matter) - Do an article on how many Americans die each year of melanoma because they don’t have health coverage or the money to visit a dermatologist. Or would that require too much writing?