Close Friends
About fifteen years ago I was between marriages and more conscious than at most times about all my physical flaws. I was walking down lower Fifth Avenue near 15th Street, which was near where I lived on Union Square. I noticed a sign next to a door which proclaimed it the offices of Dr. Joyce Martin, M.D. – Dermatology. I had known a Joyce Martin in college. She was a peripheral part of our crowd and I used to give her rides to NYC at holidays. She was pre-med and I recall she had particularly troubled skin. It seemed perfectly logical that she had become a dermatologist over the past twenty years and was the Dr. Joyce Martin advertised on the wall.
I walked into the office and was confronted by a very efficient receptionist. When I asked if it was the Dr, Joyce Martin from Cornell, she asked for my name and quietly spoke to someone on the phone, clearly following a protocol of caution in sharing information with strangers. A moment later, the Joyce I knew in college (now with much better skin) appeared behind the receptionist with a smile. Once she saw it was me she came around and gave me a polite hug. We said our hellos and shared a few facts of life before she asked what brought me in. I said I lived in the neighborhood but that I also had a few moles on my back that needed to be removed. She switched into Dr. Martin mode and said I should make an appointment to see her. I did just that and we said goodbye until then.
When I came back for the appointment her office staff handled me as I’m sure they did all new patients. There were forms to be filled out for the receptionist, who then passed me off to the nurse-practioner, who took me into a screening room. There she asked me to strip down and put on the paper gown that is standard hospital issue. She peppered me with more questions about my medical history, using the form I had previously filled out at reception to flesh out some details. She specifically asked about the offending moles on my back and took a few caliper measurements to note on her clipboard. As a last summation she said something about it being a good idea that I had come in for a full skin check-up. I assumed it was dermatology lingo of some sort and just nodded. She then left me on the examining table and said Dr. Martin would be in shortly.
After a few minutes, Joyce walked in with the clipboard, which had been placed in its holder on the outer side of the door. Joyce was all business as she read the chart.
“So in addition to the removal of the three moles on your back we’re doing a full skin check.” She said, more to the room at large than specifically me. It wasn’t a question, it was a simple statement of fact. It was the agenda for the next fifteen minutes with her fourth patient of the morning on a busy office hour day. It just so happened that the patient was an old college acquaintance, but Dr. Joyce Martin was a consummate professional for whom that would not interfere with the agenda. She asked a few “old friend” questions while she got out the calipers to remeasure the three back moles. We casually chit-chatted while she applied some local anesthetic and went about surgically removing the moles without any fuss. That was all well and good and felt pretty normal.both in terms of medical procedure and old friend catch-up.
Then it suddenly took a turn.
It seems I had misunderstood the full meaning of a full skin exam when the nurse had asked the question. I had assumed it had to do with only the province of the moles on my back and the surrounding area. Unbeknownst to me, a full skin check is about checking every inch of a patient’s skin for any issues. I am 6’5” tall and somewhat large. I have lots and lots of skin surface area. And I have all the usual nooks and crannies and then some. Well, a full skin check involves the doctor examining every inch of your skin, no matter how many nooks and crannies you have and where they are located. I’m not sure anyone, including me, had ever looked into all my nooks and crannies ever before. But here I was, with my old college friend, a female at that, with rubber gloves on and calipers at the ready to measure anything that needed measuring and probes to probe anything needing probing. What to do when that all that stood between me and a once-in-a-lifetime moment with an old acquaintance was a paper gown. So I just gritted my teeth and decided it was too late to alter my fate and that I really never had to see Dr. Joyce Martin again anyway.
The full skin check turned up nothing of concern. Joyce and I hugged goodbye after I had dressed and was ready to leave. I walked out in a surreal state of confusion about what had just happened. I did what we all do with incidents too bizarre or painful to process, I just ignored it and let it go.
About a week later my phone rang and there was Joyce on the line. I was confused because I had so thoroughly put the encounter out of mind. She told me that the biopsy on the moles had come back negative and that all was well. I wish she had ended there, but she went on to say that the full skin check was also good and that she saw no cause for dermatological concern in my life. I’m sure I was just imagining it, but I thought I detected the slightest tone of humor in her voice when she told me about the full skin check. I said goodbye and thanked her. I said we would see each other again soon since we were in the same hood. With that I hung up. It has been fifteen years since then and I have found absolutely no reason to go to a dermatologist again since then. I no longer care about my physical flaws and whatever wants to grow on me anywhere it wants to grow is welcome to it.