Thank you, GWB.

One other thought- I know everyone's googled pictures of "problem" moles and crap. I went in there with an expectation of what he might not like, some stuff that once I started thinking about it I thought might be a problem.

Turns out everything that looked to me that it might be a little squirrely turned out to be nothing. The stuff that made him say, "Hmm, I'm going to do a biopsy on this" looked like NOTHING to me. Maybe just a little skin discoloration. I would never look at it and say, "That's something I need to ask him about".

His feeling as a doctor was simply this: The emphasis and awareness that the public has that certain things can be "bad" is a double edged sword- Yes, people are looking more carefully at themselves, but they're also getting conditioned to see only certain things- bigger than a pencil eraser, growing fast, irregular borders, bleeds sometimes- when the reality is melanoma and other skin cancers can look like alot of things and are often much more subtle than a big honkin' mole.

I don't believe in scaring people into doing things, but this is one area where I've become somewhat fanatical, just because I always did take reasonable care to keep an eye on things, and the reality is even with my vigilance & "knowledge", I was utterly clueless and wouldn't know a cancerous piece of skin if it was right between my eyes.

Awesome, thanks.

sorry - forgot to add - it's Mount Sinai Dermatology Associates. 212.661.3817

i used a dermo in the city - Sylvie Epelbaum - at 30 east 40th street. no idea what she charges for non-insured, but she removed two on my face, and one on my stomach.... she's really great.

Any local dermo you can recommend?

How much does it cost to remove a "freckle" for the uninsured?

Thank you GWB. Serious stuff.

Public service announcement: If you don't go to a dermo for a screening, you're asking for trouble.

I never thought I'd have any problem, being darker skinned. I'm relatively young. I've had several things the dermo didn't like taken off of me. It's painless. It takes almost no time.

I only bring up my situation to illustrate the point- I'm pretty stupid, overall, and would have never gone to the dermo unless i had a conversation with someone who just went berzerk and insisted that I go- maybe it would have been fine, or maybe I would have been really sorry 15-20 years from now. I'll never know, because all that crap is gone now & I get screened every year or so.

Just go.

Skin cancer is so simple to deal with if you catch it early- it's almost a non-event. If you don't catch it early, there is absolutely nothing they can do for you. Pretty steep run up on the old "how big a deal is this" curve. Goes from "not really a big deal" to "the biggest deal of your life" fast.

Healy's had 2 removals of skin cancer

Thursday, August 06, 2009
By AMY SARA CLARK
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah T. Healy yesterday confirmed that he recently underwent two operations for skin cancer on his nose.

"The doctors got it in time, it is not melanoma and the prognosis is excellent," Healy said in a statement.

The first surgery was on July 22 and the second on July 29, said his spokeswoman Jennifer Morrill. Cancer was removed from two areas on his nose, she said.

Neither spot fell into the category of melanoma, an extremely dangerous form of skin cancer, Morrill said.

This isn't Healy's first bout with skin cancer, which Morrill said was the result of "years of exposure to the sun during his youth."

Healy has had "several other small spots removed from his back, chest, neck and head over the past two years," Morrill said.