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The Appointment

Short & Sweet: The Appointment

I brought Fiona to the doctor's today. It was her first visit to a doc in New Zealand. She wasn't sick - she just has a mole on her foot I wanted checked out. Nothing about the spot looked suspicious: It was symmetrical, evenly colored and wasn't growing. No worries. Except, we're living in a country with one of the highest incidences of melanoma in the world, thanks to a giant hole in the ozone layer above. You can't open the newspaper or turn on TV without hearing about skin cancer. A national ad campaign tells us to "slip, slop, slap and wrap," (slip on a shirt, slop on sunscreen, slap on a hat, and wrap your eyes in sunglasses). http://www.sunsmart.org.nz/being-sunsmart/slip-slop-slap-and-wrap

 The problem was, I couldn't remember how long Fiona has had the mole. Since birth? Nope. Since before this trip? I think so. I started to wonder if the innocent-looking brown raised dot could be something more sinister. Our old landlord, a doc with his own skin clinic, offered to take a look. He even had his partner come across the hall to offer a second opinion. "A Nevis," Geoff said. "Normal and harmless." I knew that. Of course, I knew that. But, as my friend, Andrea said, "You can't check too much." I know that, now, too.

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