Pieces of you

Having skin cancers removed is so common it's almost a rite of passage for Australians. It's both a physical and an emotional journey, as author Phillipa McGuinness discovers.

- Phillipa McGuinness

I’m standing in my underwear on the 20th floor of a suburban office tower, arms outstretched. Sun streams through the window. Fluorescent light falls from panels in the ceiling. Sharper light beams towards me. My skin, looking paler than ever under all this brightness, is getting a thorough going-over. Every square inch of the epidermis. The soles of my feet. The webbing between my toes. My palms. The contours of my ears. My scalp, armpits, limbs, torso, back, eyelids, and nose. My décolletage and backside. It’s full-body skin-check time, a ritual for many Australians. Andrew Ming, my highly qualified dermatologist, is as affable as ever. I’ve been seeing him for years and he greets me with, “How are you?”

The surroundings are familiar and my visit routine, but I feel a tight-chested, dry-mouthed sense of dread every time. We chat as I undress, but Dr Ming goes quiet as he puts on his special glasses to begin the examination. This is an annual appointment, but

I know his parting words will be, “Come back if you’re worried about anything at all.” Often I do. Because I am. During the check-up, Andrew may reach for his dermatoscopy, a magnifying lens that dermatologists use to take a close look at pigmented lesions upon the skin. A digital camera and a ruler lie within his reach, ready to photograph or measure one of the many marks on my skin to see if it has grown or changed. If it has, it will be biopsied or flagged for future monitoring. Dr. Ming may freeze something off with liquid nitrogen. He will almost certainly annotate my chart, laid out on his desk for easy reference, which shows a constellation of dots and dates speckled across an outline of the human body.