Skin Cancer

A few weeks ago, I found a suspicious mole on Micah's scalp. He's not looking at his scalp all that often, so it's a good thing he has me. :-) After a visit to the dermatologist and a biopsy, he was told it was Basal Cell Carcinoma and he needed to have it surgically removed.

If you're going to get skin cancer, this is the type you want. It is the most easily treated and the least damaging, so I guess we were "happy" about that.

The surgery involved giving Micah local anesthesia and cutting the area around the cancer. The final hole took 4 stitches and 9 staples to close up. This was more than a little surprising to us since this all started out with just a little mole.

Since his diagnosis, so many kind hearted people have been offering words of concern and telling us the importance of hats and sunscreen. Rest assured, we use A LOT of sunscreen in this family and we always have. Micah also wears his hat all the time (especially during yard work, runs and outdoor weekend activities...the work day is about the only time he doesn't. Unfortunately, this particular thing could have been in the works since a sunburn as a kid, or in the 30+ years of the 30 second walk from the car to the building. We are just a very fair-skinned family coming from long lines of fair-skinned relatives, many of whom have had similar surgeries. We use spf 70-100 on the girls on a regular basis and we hope to protect them as best as we can.

The biggest upside to all of this, is that Micah gets to sport this look on Halloween. We'll see how many neighborhood kids he can scare. ;-)