Family Story: Memere and the Mole.

This story starts about a year ago and is all completely true. Here we go:

I noticed that my fingernails were starting to lift off from my fingertips and the skin on my fingertips started peeling away and leaving big scabs. It started to hurt to touch things. None of the few over-the-counter creams/lotions helped. Neither did limiting what I did with my hands.

So, I made an appointment with my regular doctor. She had no clue what was wrong with me and referred me to a dermatologist, who didn't have an openeing for another 5 and 1/2 months! Believe me, this sucked.

Luckily, by the time the appointment finally rolled around, my fingers were in better shape, although not entirely cleared up. My prognosis: Psoriasis. Unfortunately, there was nothing she could do and I'd have to just deal with it. Since I'd waited so long for an appointment and she was pretty much telling me I waited for nothing, I decided I better make this worthwhile. "Well, since I'm here, can I get some moles removed?" I asked. I was delighted when she said, "Yes." OK, that was all the boring stuff that you needed to know so that we could get to the REAL story!

I had two moles on my chest that were bothersome, one on my torso that was ugly, and a darkened freckle on my upper arm that was a little worrisome. She seemed the most concerned about the darkened freckle on my arm and decided that that one would get dealt with first (along with the torso mole). She cut those babies right off, gave me some bandaids, Sent them out for testing, told me she'd call if there were any problems and sent me on my way.

She called a week later and told me that the test on the freckle/mole thing on my arm came back as "definitely not cancer or pre-cancer, but still somewhat abnormal." I could either leave it as is and just keep an eye on it to make sure it didn't become a problem in the future or she could go back in and cut some more out to ensure it would never turn into anything worse. Considering I had to go back in to get the chest moles removed, I decided she could cut my arm up a little more, which she did about a week later.

Afterward, the nurse put the hugest bandage on my arm, because it needed pressure or something to heal. This is what my arm looked like.

Could I be any more gorgeous?! Damn, Girl!!

You can't tell from the picture, but it jutted out from my arm about an inch and a half, too. And it was summer. And I had plans the next day. I figured, if strangers were going to see me and laugh at me, I wanted my friends to be able to share in that. So, I put the picture (shown above) on Facebook, with the caption:

What really happened: I had a mole removed (not cancer) and they gave me the mother of  all bandages. What I plan to tell anyone who asks: I got hurt while saving a bus load of school children from a bear attack.

 A couple of my friends played along and wrote how proud they were of me. My mom even got in on the joke and wrote, "You are so humble, you didn't even mention that they were all blind children." Everyone thought the whole thing was hilarious, except my Memere (She's from Quebec and "Memere" is French for "Grandmother"). My 80-something year old Memere, who so randomly has a Facebook and checks it regularly) thought the bear part of the story was the true story because English is not her first language. In fact, she doesn't know that much English at all. And with her age and the language barrier, the joke was lost on her.

She called my mom, her daughter, in a panic. "Jill got attacked by a bear? Why didn't you tell me? What happened to the schoolchildren? Why were there blind schoolchildren there?" (This is all translated from French and paraphrased by mom) I guess it took my mom, like, a half hour to assure my grandmother that I'm not a hero, just a dork with a sense of humor.

My mom had to keep telling her, over and over again that I was not attacked by bears. She just couldn't understand why I would put it on Facebook if it wasn't true. She totally missed the first part, the part about me not having cancer. I felt really bad for putting my mother through that, so I told her, in the future, "Save yourself the hassle and let Memere think I'm the Queen of Awesomeness!"

This is what that bad Larry looks like 2ish months later. Not bad!

Anyway, sorry for the long boring story. This is the first time I've told anyone this story (not counting my husband, but that's a given), because I'm pretty sure you have to know my Memere to understand how silly this all was. I hope you enjoyed it!