Holy moley!

A few months ago, I noticed a small mole growing on my lower ribcage. (Hey, it's cool to talk about your weird moles on your blog. Really.) After a couple months had passed, I noticed that it was getting bigger and changing shape, and since I am the poster child for skin cancer (fair hair, fair skin, freckles, blue eyes), I decided to get it checked out. I went to the dermatologist, who didn't seem to think it was problematic, but was nevertheless enthusiastic about the idea of cutting it out. The lab results came back this week, and it turns out that it was cancerous- not the scary bad melanoma kind, but a more common form of skin cancer called basal cell carcinoma. I do need to go back to make sure the little sucker was completely excised, but it should be fine. The thing that surprised me was that it's a sun-related cancer, and since I don't spend all that much time in a bikini, it was an unusual place for it to develop. So for today's public service announcement, make sure you have those funky new moles checked out, even if you don't think they could be cancerous. And that goes double for my palefaced brethren. And triple for people living in Australia, which has the highest rate of skin cancer in the world.