Thursday, July 5, 2012

Basal Cell Carcinoma - cured

I'm rather happy today.  I saw Dr. Alastair McLeod again. He's a really fine gentleman.  He looked at my face.  I'd stopped the Aldara 5% cream at his request 2 weeks ago. The inflammation settled on the polysporin cream. 2 weeks of waiting. Then thanks to Dr. Chalmers original reassurance and seeing Dr. McLeod I wasn't picking at my face or psychotic with anxiety.
No slabs of flesh and ripped muscle hung from my facial bones. I was being good and had gone to the high stress work without any major flareups. I'd not peed in corners or physically attacked strangers. None of the normal stress indicators had flared up, thanks to the excellent medical care I received from these grand men of medicine.  Even doctors have trouble acting as if everything is normal in these abnormally unusual times.

"Well, let's see it," he said.  He put his holy light in my face and looked at my skin like only a dermatologist can.  "I think it's okay," he finally said.

I did my whooping,  happy dance. Football players and basketball players have nothing on aging intellectuals prepared for death, being told they're going to live. It's brings out that "Elaine dance" thing from Jerry Seinfeld.   Soon I  was waltzing him round and round the waiting room, doing tango across the floor, back flipping chimpanzee style.  That's when he brought in a little reality show to the Sermon on the Mount. He said he was just saying that "In my opinion, it's not cancer".

"Watch it till September and if it's continues to resolve, you're okay, otherwise you can come back and see me." It's really hardly a speck compared to the growing lump it was.

"Don't let anyone tell you that Psychiatrists and Dermatologists don't cure things." he said in parting.

I was really happy.  Relieved indeed
.
Whatever it was, "it"  had appeared to go away. Just like a bad house guest or one of those people who start to talk to you somewhere you were looking for peace a quiet.

Personally all of the following could have happened:
1) It was an hallucination of mine and I convinced several other doctors to join in the group hallucination, a folie e deux thing.  My deep seated guilt about teen age masturbation had resulted in the psychoneurotic phenomena that caused projective identification in the doctors I consulted.  It healed because I 'faced' my neurosis and brought my 'shame' to be shared.
2) Threatened by the 'knife'  and emergency immuno response occured saving my face from mutilation.
2) The Aldara Cream 5%, (Imiquimod)  known to be effective in the treatment of early basal cell carcinoma did the trick of stimulating my own self healing response to reject the cancer.  We all have cancer cells that are being killed off routinely. This explains the common 30% spontanious healing response seen in all kinds of medicine.
3) My friends and myself praying for me contributed to the spiritual healing response. Some face 'demon' was exorcised.
4) I took time off from my very very very high stress job and read novels and bounced around on a boat at anchor far from the work  'front' , away from the battle noise of screaming and tears, away from sickness, misery,  insaniety.  Especially away from the 'anger' and entitlement.  Especially far away from the Monday morning quaterbacks and all the countless regulators and judges and those who don't want to get their hands dirty but sure want to make their ridiculous marks by 'criticizing' those who do. I hung out with the dog and girl and rested.  Rest is amazing for healing too.
5) Dr. Chalmers and Dr. McLeod are both true healers and their 'tools' of healing are just means whereby these great medicine men conceal their 'healing touch'.  Both of them touched my face.  Both of them spoke soothing hypnotic words  to me.  It was like treating Dr. Hoffer's patients. His vitamins were never 'proven' to work but I saw first hand that the man was a great healer and the patients he passed along to me and those I inheritted when he retired were living proof of his amazing healing abilities.  I think often healers are just that and the meds and potions and blades and things aren't what is really doing the work.  Healing is deeper in the relationship, at the level of empathy and experience.
6) It may come back. I might be hit by a bus before then. My friend Tom wants me to go up in his rebuilt antigue plane with him. Pay back from me getting him to sail back from Hawaii with me.  Maybe  I will have surgical solution hopefully bilaterally so the turkey neck can be tucked a bit.  I could end up looking as good as Nick Nolte the way I'm going and I don't have his wisdom to go with the appearance of such. For now I'm utterly relieved.
7) I'm older and I'm feeling my age.  Those of us still working feel the weight as it seems more and more are carried by fewer and fewer.  But that's the tax burden and the failed economic systems.  My anxiety about the future affected my health in the present and was a message to me to focus on the present where I can live with God. God has always taken care of me so I really needn't worry about tomorrow. Castastrophising and awfulizing don't help.
Thanks to all those who prayed, the well wishers and the friends and family.  What a silly I am! Vanity, all is vanity.

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