I have surgery in a month to remove it and a full body skin check at the end of June. Skin checks are a yearly thing for me and have been for almost a decade! You should make skin checks a part of your life too! Maybe not every year-that's up to your skin, medical history and your physician's recommendation. But at least by the time you turn 30, go get a full scan once to get a baseline.
If we have met, ever, you have seen me laugh. I laugh a lot. I laugh loudly, I laugh whole heartedly. My life is one big joke peppered with moments where I have to grow up and put on a straight face.
I adore my laugh lines and my crow's feet. My impression, at my tender age of 30 and from the many women in their 40s and 50s, is that women want to be rid of these beauties. It's an insult of some sort, apparently.
I don't feel insulted. I'm joyful when I see these lines. As a whole, I love my body. A few years ago it dawned on me that this is the only body I get. This body contains everything that makes me leanne. All of my life experiences, everything i've learned and seen and done, it's contained in THIS vessel. It's not a tool to be manipulated, it is not an obstacle to my happiness. Every single thing I bring to this world, my unique place in the grand design of life, it depends on this body. These crooked toes, these long legs, this stringy hair, these beautiful eyes, this soft belly, this pancake flat ass, these adorable freckles, this smooth skin, these perfectly proportionate ears..... this is unique, and this one is mine. I am grateful for the life my body has allowed me to live.
I am grateful for my laugh lines. I am thankful for the 30 years that I have obviously spent smiling, laughing, expressing myself.
And I am terrified of losing them. The odds of a recurrence are around 40% if you take the most conservative calculations. When you factor in how young I am starting and how many other spots I have had removed from my body already, that 40% is a fantasy.
For many women, the surgeries to remove these small spots (you can see mine in that picture above. It's the red spot on my cheek, near the end of my nose) is a lose-win-win. Lose: you have cancer. Win: it's easily removed. Win 2: they can use the surgery to pull and tuck things a wee little bit when you have extra skin. You can get little bitty face enhancements one at a time covered by insurance!
I don't want my face enhanced. I am finding myself terrified of growing old and not looking older. I know it's jumping the gun. But I think about it every time I look in the mirror now. Will I get to keep this face? Or piece by piece, surgery after surgery, will it be lifted and tugged and pulled taut and leave me looking different at 60 than I would have if nature had taken its course without cancer's help?
When people tell me I look amazing for my age, will it be because surgery stopped me from getting wrinkled and soft, or because I simply look good? Will people think I had work done out of vanity?
Overall I don't think anyone would describe me as the kind of lady who cares a whole lot about what people think of me. But the idea that people would consider me vain just by looking at me, without knowing me, when in reality I just had the misfortune of having skin cancer at a young age... it rubs me the wrong way.
Cancer rubs me the wrong way.
