When a Doctor Calls You at Home at 7 PM on a Saturday Night

 When a doctor calls you at home at 7 PM on a Saturday night, your first thought has to be:"this can't be good."

Luckily, for me, it wasn't so bad.

So, my left shoulder and I have been in a battle for some time now. In January, I slipped on the interior steps of our apartment and landed squarely on my ego. You have, if you follow my mental wanderings with any regularity, been provided chapter and verse of my surgery and recovery. I was pronounced almost good as new a few weeks back. And starting last week, I was allowed the freedom to curse the gods on the golf course.

A few days before my surgery, I met with a dermatologist whose task was to advise if any of the score of moles and other strange looking protuberances were more than met the eye. And she focused on one spot that was located, as you now might suspect, on my uncooperative left shoulder. There was no way, I stated, that she was taking a small slice out of that area immediately before I was to face a most unkind cut in that very region from a surgeon.

And so, I quickly forgot about her concern, for I was dealing with a mountain and could not focus on a mole.

Fast forward to slightly more than 2 weeks ago. As I had scaled to the top of Everest and was now swinging a golf club free of pain (at least physical), I was before a different dermatologist, showing my full self to a new set of eyes. Bingo, back to the left shoulder. He studied it with a small microscope and then informed me that the offending area would have to be sliced and diced. The biopsy results would take a week to 10 days he said.

So, three days later, when I received that Saturday night greeting from him, I suspected he was not calling to let me know the Yankees had looked a little shaky recently.

Melanoma, he said. But only on the top layer of the skin. Just have to cut some more around the surrounding area to be absolutely certain that you are clear of any hint of cancer and then you can move about the cabin freely. Or at least that is what I heard, after I took a moment or two to recover from hearing the word at the top of this paragraph.

I could have addressed this a half year ago had my offending limb not been otherwise wounded. I was most fortunate that during that time the cancer had apparently not taken a trip beyond where it  remained while I recuperated from the shoulder surgery.

And it was but serendipity that I even saw this latest doctor. I had been in another physician's office very recently (don't ask) and on the way out the door, she remarked that I had to see a dermatologist for a mole she spotted behind one of my knees. But for that glance, I may not have found my way to where I am today.

Which is at a 3:15 appointment for the cutting and stitching. I am grateful that good luck seems to have spared me from anything more than the most minor of temporary distractions from my golf game. Soon, I hope to be able to query the ball, with my reconstructed and cancer free shoulder, and wonder why it has decided that the bottom of the cup is its sworn enemy.

This should be my most pressing question.

I am one very lucky guy.