Gut Check

(or, paying attention without guarantees)

Anyone who has ever worked on a team with me knows I rarely ask someone to do something I cannot, have not, or would not do myself. I do not always know how to do the thing particularly well. That is why teams exist. But I try to understand what I am asking before I ask it.

Since becoming a Cancer Shark, I have been encouraging people, both in person and online, to get skin checks. A full-body scan with a dermatologist. A basic act of attention.

It took me longer than I am proud of to realize that I had never actually had one myself.

So I asked my oncologist if, given everything else going on, it still made sense to do. He said yes.

So I did the thing.

The appointment itself was uneventful. The dermatologist did not see anything on my skin that looked concerning. We decided to biopsy the one spot that could possibly be something, a large mole on my back that has been there for as long as I can remember seeing my own body.

The results came back today. Benign.

Relief arrived quietly.

There are theories about how this can happen. About immune systems sometimes addressing things on their own. I do not know which theories apply to me, if any. What I do know is simpler and harder.

If I had been getting regular skin checks, it is far less likely that the original source of my melanoma would have gone undetected.

That does not mean a skin check would have saved me from everything that followed. It also does not mean avoiding one risk makes me immune to another.

The lesson, for me, is not “do not bother,” and it is not “this could have been prevented.” It is that attention matters, even when it does not guarantee safety. Maybe especially then.

I still wish “unfair” counted for something. I wish “too much already” could disqualify a body from more harm. I wish there were a ledger that eventually closed.

But my body does not keep score the way I think I want it to. Honestly, how could I even know that?

So I will keep doing what I ask others to do.

I will keep paying attention.

And I will keep making room for both relief and regret to coexist.

That is what living honestly in this body looks like now.