Thin Skinned

The other day, I got a bit of disappointing news. My dermatologist is retiring. I knew she was older than, well, older than me, but it never occurred to me that she was close to an age where one thinks about no longer working. Of course, she might just be young-ish and have had enough. Either way, I wasn’t expecting it. I figured I would continue to see her well after the acne died down and the wrinkles kicked in, after every last mole had been removed, until I too reached the age of retirement.

I received this news from my doctor while sitting on the exam table, wearing only my panties and a white paper sheet that is somewhere between a tablecloth and a street map in both size and ease of unfolding. After she told me, she thanked me for trusting my skin to her for the past few years, complimented my patient style, and left. I sat alone in the exam room and thought sadly about how much I didn’t want to have to start all over with a new dermatologist.

If you think about it, seeing the dermatologist is almost more of an intimate experience than seeing a gynecologist. At the OB/GYN’s office, you get both a paper vest and the paper sheet, and the exam is over before you know it. You spend most of it on your back, staring at the ceiling and avoiding all eye contact while things are done to you. And to the doctor, well, you are just another pair of tits and pussy. Grope, grope, duck bill, extra long Q-tip, a couple of fingers shoved in, mash on the belly a few times, remove the glove, and write a prescription for birth control. An hour wait for a ten minute exam. And ten minutes is being generous.


The skin exam is a whole different story. You get to leave on your panties, but every inch of your exposed skin is inspected. The lights are the brightest fluorescent known to man, and the room is large, allowing the doctor to circle you repeatedly, finding the best angle to really study your blemishes and imperfections. Your scalp is reviewed. Any skin fold is unfolded and ogled. Even your toes are spread apart, the spaces between them scrutinized. And those panties you are allowed to wear? Well, they are pulled down so that even your below the belt can be scanned. If something looks questionable, the doctor pauses for a closer look, touching, spreading your skin flat, and noting it for further intensive review. It’s even less fun than the way I described it. So you can see why it is so important to be comfortable with your dermatologist.


I’ve had my share of unpleasant skin doctors. I had the one who was too busy to wait for the numbing shot to work before she grabbed her scalpel and sliced off my favorite mole on my right ankle. I had one who decided that his nurse could do my body scan for me, not even stopping by to say hello on his way to bill my insurance company for an office visit. I also had the overly cautious one with was a little too eager with the punch biopsy.

A punch biopsy is when the doctor cuts a hole out of your skin with a little cookie cutter type thing, not unlike an ice fishing hole. Your skin plug is sent to a pathologist to be diagnosed, and the dermatologist either stitches you up or, more likely, cauterizes the hole. Cauterizing is a fancy word for burning; they cut you and then burn you, which in a different setting might involved federal hate crime charges. You leave in pain and smelling like barbecue.

Well, this doc was punch drunk over the punch biopsy, and she single handedly reduced my mole count, if you keep count of such things, to a mere five, preferring to cut on me at least once a visit. She took my cute little star-shaped mole off my right hip (too irregular) and also part of my mole near my belly button (too dark) and even my chin mole (actually, that was at my request). I was not a particularely moley person before, but now my skin is strange to me without its usual landmarks.

The very last time I saw her, she gouged something out of the corner of my eye and something else off my left breast. When she finished and left the room, I hopped off the table and looked in the mirror. I had blood dripping both from my breast and my eye. I looked like I had stigmata, crying tears and lactating blood. I was more holy than that Virgin Mary grilled cheese sandwich sold on eBay.

My current dermatologist, who is retiring, is nothing at all like the others I’ve seen. She is more like your friend’s mom when you were in the fifth grade. She is quiet and slightly nurturing, but knows what she is doing. You can picture her taking a tray of cookies out of the oven more than you can lancing your boil.

Not that she can’t inflict pain too; believe me, she can. My last visit saw her freezing a cluster of pre-cancerous cells off my forehead, a spot I forgot until I scratched it, each and every time for the rest of the day. She also stuck a needle through a clogged pore near my nose and squeezed on it with that little metal stick with the hole on the end, which I am pretty sure was invented during the Spanish Inquisition. (I can’t hear that without thinking of Mel Brooks singing, just so you know.) But she acted like she felt bad about the pain part, an unfortunate result of her treatment.

I wanted to hug her goodbye when she left the room but I was, after all, only wearing a paper sheet. So I just gave a friendly little wave, got dressed, settled my tab at the check-out counter, got in my car, and sat all misty-eyed for a good five minutes. Then I started the car and drove to Target, where I purchased my sunscreen and acne medication. I figured if I start now, then next year I won’t give the new dermatologist a chance to show me how he too can bring me to tears.

So long, Dr. CP.