When even your doctor doesn’t know why

In response to  The Daily Post  : Inkling

It was the day after I had surgery on my left leg to beat melanoma. A wide excision of the tumor and a sentinel lymph note biopsy had been performed. The surgeon came to me and we talked. First he told me that everything went according to plan, and that he was very sure that nothing of the melanoma was left. So I didn’t need further treatments like chemotherapy or radiation for now. He had a look at the incision and said, that it was healing well. But I still had questions.

“Do you have any idea how long ago the melanoma started to grow?” I asked. He hesistated and replied: “It’s difficult to say, but my guess would be about a year.”

I nodded. Everything made sense now. The tiredness, the ear infection that didn’t heal.

He went on: “We found dead cells in the tumor, that means your body started attacking it.”

I let this sink in for a while. My body had been fighting cancer all the time. But there was one more thing I wanted to know. I rarely got sunburnt in my childhood, I do not have many birthmarks or freckles, we rarely had been to southern Europe in the summer, I used sunscreen, so…

“Why did this happen?” I asked.

“I don’t have an inkling.” he answered, got up and left.