by Marc Phillippe Babineau

Created on: July 11, 2008   Last Updated: July 21, 2008

At first, my Family Doctor told me that it was a pimple, to wash it and to stop picking at it. My family said the exact same thing, nobody seemed to be listening to me, there was this weird feeling on my left facial cheek, raised around the edges, scarred horribly, and a hole that I could easily fit the entire white part of a Q-Tip into. For a little over a year and a half, I was repeatedly given this advice. A dermatologist and a Plastic Surgeon both agreed with the diagnosis. After pleading with him, and telling him that it was causing me great grief and embarrassment, the Plastic Surgeon agreed to remove this "pimple extraordinaire" from my face.

Fast forward to the day of the "removal". I am lying on the operating table, a "selective operation", and the surgeon tells me that it will take about 15 minutes. After the 5th freezing needle had been administered, about two hours into this 15 minute operation, I hear him tell the nurse that we really should be in an operating room, that there is obviously more to it than meets the eye. Do ya think? Another few more freezing needles later, the grinding started, removing pieces of my cheekbone and orbital bone. A couple of weeks later, I was told that the "pimple" was squamous cell carcinoma, a type of skin cancer to the connective tissue, most likely caused by too much sun exposure.

Are we tanning to death? You betcha! 37 Radiation treatments later, after being told that the cure will probably kill me in 15 to 20 years (a much longer time frame than if they would have not given the radiation therapy), nobody had apologized for treating me like a child and not believing me that I was not "picking at the pimple", except for my GP, who was totally devastated. And no, in Canada, you cannot sue a doctor for misdiagnosing you.

The moral of this story, so far, is to not trust the first diagnosis of a family doctor, and to keep your skin protected from the harmful rays of the sun. Growing up, we were always told to go outside to play, all day long. Sunscreen was not around at the time (1960's), but the markets were saturated with suntan oils. Sun tanning was good for you, you see, and the golden-brown hue of the tanned skin made people look healthier. The commercials on T.V. told us this to be true. As a teenager and into my twenties, I was a sun god, bicycling to the nearest lake in nothing but a pair of shorts and sneakers, swimming and lying in the sun all day with my friends. Working on outside jobs, nobody wore sunscreen,

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