The Good Kind of Cancer

I have decided to tell people that the scar on my cheek is a shrapnel wound from World War I. I really wanted to say that it is the result of a dueling wound, but nobody seems inclined to think that I attended a German University before World War I, or that I have ever been interested in defending my honor, particularly with a sword.

The scar is, as I mentioned before, where the dermatologist excavated my cheek to rid me of a basal cell carcinoma. That is not "basil" cell, although I wish it were. Today I had about thirty stitches removed, along with about forty hairs from my beard, which I had not been allowed to shave while the incision healed: collateral damage.

Ed asked what the bandage was all about. I told him. Ed has a serious case of cancer. "Basal cell," he said. "That is the good kind of cancer."

I had not imagined that I would ever hear those words.

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