The Price of Peace of Mind

I made D go to the dermatologist today.

This may come as a surprise to many of you, but I'm a bit of a worrier. I deal with worry by determining my probable response to worst-case scenarios. I like to have a plan: IF this occurs, THEN I will... (I do this mostly in regard to potential employment or unemployment, as it were, post-graduation).

It drives D crazy. He calls it my "What if" game and he usually refuses to play it.

I don't think I have an anxiety disorder but it is possible that my mind wanders to more frightening scenarios than most people's. For example, on the way to the doctor today, D noted that they had finally paved a street near our house that they'd been working on for weeks. And I remarked that although I understand you have to have matter to make matter, I find myself concerned about the weight of concrete and steel and I wonder sometimes if our urban centers and growing populations could ever be so great as to actually make the sheer weight of all stuff we put on the earth greater than the pull of gravity at the earth's core, thereby shifting the earth's axis and causing unavoidable disaster re: rotation of the sun, hitting other planets, etc.

Judging by the look on D's face as I rambled on about this, he has never wondered about such things.

So D was not worried about skin cancer, but I noticed that he has a dark mole in the center of his back and I did not want to delay treatment until he was hallucinating about his dead fiancee. Also his mom had melanoma, he had a really bad sunburn as a child, and he is sometimes (dare I say often?) negligent about sunscreen unless I am there to be a nagging shrew. Anyway, he basically agreed to go to the dermatologist to give me one less to worry about (which is great, so now I have more time to concentrate on what might happen should the earth's axis shift ever so slightly).

It was quick and easy, all things considered. The worst part was that D had to strip down to his undies and put on a hospital gown -- which I found totally traumatizing (not the stripping part ha ha the hospital gown part). I have never seen him in a hospital gown before and I totally hated it and it freaked me out. I was giving him stern instructions that he is to NEVER get seriously ill or require hospitalization EVER when the first doctor came in.

I'm guessing she was an intern. She was young and pale (appropriate, I thought, for a dermatologist). She was very nice and I pointed out the one mole that creeps me out and she said it was fine but that they are willing to test any moles that we really feel uncomfortable about even if they appear to the doctor to be totally benign.

The other doctor came in and he was also young but an attractive Indian guy. I liked him because before he began the exam he tried to fix the trashcan that was in the corner of the room. The lid was stuck open when it should have been closed. It was driving him nuts. I was glad to see this bothered him because I think totally anal type-A personalities are exactly what I am looking for in a doctor.

At any rate, the exam was fine. No weird moles, everything looks great. He gave D a sunscreen lecture (well worth the co-pay, as far as I am concerned) and said he should have an exam done every couple of years.

All together it cost $20 and took about15 minutes, but I left feeling much better, which is more than I can say for my own doctor visits lately.