When I went to the dermatologist to get my stitches taken out--the stitches for that fatty tumor I had removed--I asked when the feeling would come back to my forehead. "Within a month," she said, and I was relieved; I didn't know if nerves such as they cut grew back at all, or if I would always be the numbskull I am now. I tap my forehead and it feels like there's a half-inch layer of wax over it. "You need to come back in six months," she told me, "for a skin cancer check, because of the carcinoma in your family." Nothing could be more ridiculous. It's not that I don't think I'll get skin cancer. It's just that I am constantly checking myself for it--every little sore, black spot, boil, zit, anything I see on my skin I watch carefully, saying to myself, "If it doesn't go away in two days, I'm going to the doctor." I am always worrying about cancer, inspecting little lumps, feeling my lymph nodes, believing that I'm dying. Yes, yes: this is it, I'm dying. I went to the doctor six months ago and he checked my knee jerk reflex--just a routine thing, where they strike your knee with the little hammer. He struck my knee and--nothing. He tried it again and again--still no kick of my leg. I worried for three days as he did some blood tests, worried that I had Parkinson's, MS, diabetes. Finally when I called for the blood work he said there was nothing wrong with me. "Did you notice I had no knee jerk reflex?" I said. "Yes," he said, "but some people just don't have it--it doesn't mean anything." But I had worked myself up into such worry that it would not wind down for a week. Finally, I resigned myself that I wasn't dying. It took quite a while. Really, I wanted to tell the dermatologist, if I get skin cancer, I'll know it as soon as I have a thousand malignant cells--I'll know it before anyone else would think it's something to worry about at all. I'm just that way.