I don’t have cancer. Not yet, anyway, or not one that we’ve found. But this morning, when I read Fred Thompson’s somewhat lame addition to this political season’s cancerpalooza, I realized that I had a story to share as well, and it happened only yesterday.

But first we have to go back, wayyyy back… to the day before yesterday. That was when I went to have my first check-up in years. Now that I’ve joined that elite minority known as “insured Americans,” I thought it was time. Plus, I had a Thing that needed looking at.

I don’t have a doctor out here in Los Angeles, so I went to the Writers’ Guild benefits page and selected the nearest one to me. The doctor was in a good neighborhood, so what could possibly go wrong?

Dr. Irma Kostok’s office was indeed in a good neighborhood, but the office itself was dingy and dank. Immediately I felt a little out of place, because when not directly addressing me, the receptionist, the nurse, and an unidentified old man spoke to each other in Russian, and many of the medical pamphlets on the waiting room table had pleasing Cyrillic typefaces (pleasing but completely unreadable - I don’t read Russian any better than I speak it, which is not at all). The form I had to fill out started with a “Miss/Mrs” blank. No “Mr.” I almost walked out. Should’ve walked out.

[I should point out that “Kostok” is not my new doctor’s name. Not even close, really. It’s a name that I made up, googled, and found was not completely fictitious. My apologies to the 30 or so perfectly nice Kostoks I found on the web.]

It was a crappy, perfunctory exam. Dr Kostok (who also speaks with a Russian accent) is competent, I think, but couldn’t care less. Cartoonish Russian fatalism oozes from her every pore. If there was a global market for pursed lips and weary shrugs, this office would have a spouting derrick in the middle of it.

So I show her the Thing I’m a little concerned about - a doohicky on my left calf that hasn’t gone away and eventually bled when I tried to MAKE it go away a couple of weeks ago. I’m just looking for reassurance that it’s nothing - a bug bite, a wart, etc. I was a little worried - we Felbers catch cancer the way other folks get the sniffles. I lost my father to cancer, and it also claimed the one grandparent of mine who enjoyed the privilege of dying of natural causes (as a family we’re also prone to accidents and the occasional genocide). So okay, I was a little more than “a little concerned” - just making the appointment and resolving to ask the doctor about it made me sort of neurotic on the subject. The Thing on my leg is probably nothing, but I need a dab of professional confirmation. Just look at it, say a word that doesn’t rhyme with Santa’s first two reindeer, and I’ll go home.

So I take a breath and ask Dr. Kostok about it. I roll up my pant leg. She takes a quick look at the Thing, bending down just enough to see it.

“Hrrmm,” she says. “You should see dermatologist, because it could be cancer.” She looked at me with a sad, resigned nod. And said no more about it.

This ruined my day.

The rest of the exam involved the doctor wandering out, the nurse taking me to another room to draw blood, being given a cup, filling the cup with the vaguely requested fluid (I hope I got it right, nobody ever actually said what they wanted in there), and then sitting in my appointed chair until 10 minutes later when the nurse strolled by and was surprised to see me. “You’re still here? You’re done.” When will my test results be in? The nurse and the receptionist weren’t really sure, and shrugged at each other and me at a glacial pace. Seriously, one fluctuation in the shrug market and Dick Cheney is going to start muttering about how the oppressed people of Dr. Kostok’s office are yearning to be liberated…

And they didn’t know when the tests would be done. “Friday, you call. Maybe Wednesday.” The office was filling up as I left. With elderly Russian men and women. Dr. Kostok, who had wandered out of the examining room without comment, as though summoned by the strumming of a distant balalaika, never reappeared. I hope she found her cherry orchard.

I took my cancer home. Immediately, I started locating dermatologists (same method, even more stringent neighborhood requirements). I found one who could see me the next morning. And then I spent the rest of the afternoon cruising WebMD and other sites, attempting to self-diagnose. Fretting. I soon learned that a late-stage melanoma has a 50% survival rate… of 5 years. There’s no real way to figure out the stage visually, so I soon had aches in all my lymph nodes, where the cancer had suddenly spread on its way to my brain. It took a little bit of research to determine where exactly my lymph nodes were so that they could start hurting more accurately, but it was worth it.

But by nightfall I was pretty convinced that I didn’t have a melanoma. The pictures and other info didn’t match what I was looking at. It was almost certainly a wart, I thought, just in an odd location. Possibly a squamous cell cancer, which is very curable, usually. But a wart, probably. Maybe a cyst. No, a wart. Or the squamous cell thing, which wouldn’t be that bad, really… I went to bed a little reassured, but didn’t sleep too well…

The dermatologist turned out to be a nice, young Indian guy. He takes a look at the Thing. “I think it’s a wart,” he says instantly. “I’ll take it off right now, and we’ll test it, because sometimes what we call a ’squamous cell cancer’ can look like that too. But I’m 90% sure it’s a wart.”

He applied some anesthetics, sliced it off, burned the root. The whole thing took a minute or two. He said he’d call in a week if the tests showed anything, but otherwise he wouldn’t bother, and that I shouldn’t be too concerned. Game over, from a panic perspective. Breathable air rushed into the bubble of vacuum that had surrounded my head. My lymph nodes stopped aching and quietly went back to doing whatever it is that they do. I paid half of my annual deductible and went home.

–

Chalk it up to poor selection criteria, I guess (both in my doctor-finding methodology and for Felbers from an evolutionary standpoint). I don’t even blame Dr. Kostok, really. Between a slight language barrier and majorly awful bedside manner, she scared the living fuck out of me. But what she said was technically correct: When you find a new spot on your skin and it doesn’t go away you could see a dermatologist because it could be cancer. True enough, Dr. Kostok. True. And because I don’t expect to see her again, I’m sure she’ll assume the cancer took me. I hope she gets at least one long, weary, infinitely melancholy shrug out of it.

Barring unexpected test results, that’s my brush with not-cancer. Is it enough to get me a few votes, or at least get me into the conversation, like Fred Thompson? I like to think so - after all, I was scared shitless by it. That has to count for something. Also, if anyone needs a diagnosis, it turns out that I’m pretty good on WebMD.