It has been a week. It has truthfully been kind of exhausting the past few weeks, mainly emotionally.

At the beginning of September, as my friends and family know, and some of my readers, I was diagnosed with skin cancer again. Fortunately, it was only basal cell. Unfortunately, it was the back of my head. And it was sizable.

First, I had the Mohs surgery, and then a week and a day ago I had post cancer reconstructive surgery on the back of my head. That surgery was in an operating room under general anesthesia. The surgeon and other doctors and nurses at the hospital where it was done were amazing. It was Penn Presbyterian in Philadelphia if anyone’s interested.

It was a really long day and because it was a day surgery you are in a large ward with other patients also having day surgeries. I’ve done that before since they want to keep you out of the hospital as much as they can, but this time I didn’t have the most positive collective of other patients pre-and post surgery. Emotionally and psychologically that makes a difference. And it’s a very odd feeling when you go into something trying to be as positive as humanly possible although it’s hard for you and the people around you just aren’t.

So I’ve had a week of recovery and counting the hours to lessening pain. And yes, that is the one thing that was most incredible to me having never had anything done on my head. I had no idea how much it actually hurt. I will not be a candidate for a face lift needless to say. It was big time ouch. I have had other Mohs procedures, including skin grafts, and the pain faded away very quickly with those.

And yes, that photo is what the back of my head looks like eight days later. It’s a big spot. And thankfully, it’s healing nicely, and my hair is starting to show signs of growing back.

I am sure some of you remember a couple of years ago when that woman from the Devon area, who was one of the anti-masking school board nutbags, decided to post a photo of me in a hospital gown that she had found after I had written about my breast cancer surgery waiting to happen 12 years ago. We all know that was done to try to shame me as a woman…during #pinktober no less. It didn’t. It just proved who she actually was,

And I was thinking about that incident this morning as I was getting ready to write this post because I thought here they will have another photo to have fun with of me. But then I thought screw it. Writing about things like this is important to me. And frankly it counts as my own personal self-care as a survivor of breast and skin cancer.

A lot of people tend to downplay things like skin cancer. I wish they wouldn’t. Having a dermatologist is important. And I’m not talking about so you can get the little injectables to perk up Mother Nature’s signs of aging. I’m talking about having a dermatologist that does annual skin checks so you don’t have to have a surgery like I had to have. Or worse so you don’t get melanoma. I have never been a huge sun worshiper, and I still have ended up with basal cell and squamous cell.

One of the things I’ve been thinking about is the loss of the hair in the back of my head. And psychologically how it made me feel. I faced this prospect when I had breast cancer because until all the pathology was back after my surgery they didn’t know if it was going to be just radiation or if I would also have chemotherapy so I remember in theory trying to work through how this would make me feel and I can tell you that how it feels in reality versus wondering how it’s going to feel are two entirely different conversations.

Having this hair removed was necessary. It doesn’t make it any easier. I’ll get through it because I had the surgical procedure so I didn’t have permanent hair loss in the back of my head after the Mohs surgery.

People seem to forget that there’s a real human being behind this blog. I have written before about the contact I get, and often about the times of day and night that the contact occurs. And going through this well dealing with that recently has been interesting.

I like to help when I can. But I am not going to write about everything and when you’ve just had your head sawed open and somebody’s telling you that you have to write about something and you’re thinking to yourself who the hell are you it’s kind of amusing. Sometimes it’s not amusing sometimes it’s downright irritating.

I had one person who basically took advantage of me after anesthesia. I’m letting that go but giving them the grace that they’re just in a tough spot. But they created their own tough spot for a lot of it, with and I think that’s a shame. I had other people contact me about things I really couldn’t help with so I tried to steer them towards people who might be able to.

Of course, then I had the people who had to just send me love notes to tell me what a terrible horrible person I was and you just look at the message and think these are grown-ups why do they just not move on to something else to read that’s more in line with their comfort level?

Or how about the people who want me to do something for them, message me, then block me. So I can’t get clarity on anything. But they just expect me to do whatever? People anesthesia might slow my roll but I am not that dumb.

And then there were the people that I reached out to to follow up on things that I was interested in. Ironically, nothing controversial, nothing political, just things that interest me where I want to pay it forward by writing about it. I will note that I am still waiting for a response. I understand we all lead busy lives, but it takes a very minimal amount of time to just let someone know that they got your outreach.

As a blogger, people LOVE to kiss your ass if you can do something for them. And when you ask to be put on a media distribution list because something a non profit is doing interests you and you want to be supportive but you are made to feel small? Do you remain gracious or not?

Nonprofits love it when you cover things for them especially because like people with other kinds of issues, there isn’t enough media to go around. Especially because our local papers have been bought up by hedge funds and eviscerated. And with television media, it’s a whole different ball game on what they cover, and what the powers that be will allow reporters to cover. There are also local/regional magazines and regional newspapers and every single one has their own jam as to coverage.

When I did my little outreach, I wasn’t asking for anything in the arena of special treatment or favors. Technically, I’m a paying customer. So needless to say, I am disappointed. So I’m writing about it. Nicely for now.

Bloggers are people too. I know you love to hate us especially me but I’m useful when you need something, I’m useful when you want something, and every once in a while I reach out and return and say hey can I get on a list for information? Ironically, a lot of the times these are the people that when they’re getting things out of me say oh, we count you as media as well, and then I remind them no I’m not but sometimes I need the same information if it’s possible.

But then, when I ask for the information and I don’t even get a reply to an email that was a reminder email a week after surgery and I probably shouldn’t even be thinking about it, but I am, it kind of chuffs.

But hey, that’s OK, I can also quietly chose not to support things. Because that’s the truth of the matter: when I ask for information from a nonprofit or other kind of event it’s because I’m supporting an event personally. It means that yes, I attend, I buy tickets.

And I don’t want to be that person. But when you are technically a paying customer and you happen to be a writer and you ask for information because you believe in what’s being done, what’s the problem? I’m not traditional media? I’m good enough when you want to sell tickets.

There are other things over the years and more recently that I either could not attend because of all that was going on or because of just other things. But I’m not some “influencer“ who expects to be bought paid and catered to in order for them to post a photo or two. I’m an actual real person that believes in what you’re trying to do.

And in the category of being an actual real person, when you’re supposed to be a friend and I don’t hear from you literally in a year, then you contact me and you want a favor? How am I supposed to react exactly?

Of course there are also the people that just send me links to events with no explanation whatsoever. Or links to things that I’m not quite grasping why I’m getting the links to these things and sometimes you do have to explain it to me. I try to keep up with things, but I can’t keep up with everything it’s not possible. So I really appreciate the people that send me stuff and then give me an explanation so I know what I’m looking at.

To be honest me being forced to actually sit still, and not do as much has been really difficult. As has being a woman vain about her hair being forced to lose a bunch of it.

I can’t even explain the feelings I experienced when I had to go into the bathroom in the postop so I could go home and I wanted to straighten my hair a little bit after being in post op a while. Except when I started to take the braids out that had been keeping my hair off of the first surgical wound, it all started to come out in my hands and go into the sink and onto the floor. It was totally surreal, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. It was in that moment that I understood what I hadn’t completely understood before with breast cancer, because I hadn’t experienced it.

Meanwhile, I’ve been watching all of life go by. I’ve had lots of people telling me what to do on my page this week on Facebook, which is always amusing because it’s my blog’s Facebook page not theirs.

But hey, I’m coming out the other side of this. A little older, less hair for now, and maybe a little wiser. However, with time spent to be introspective it means I realized again that you can’t please all of the people all of the time, and when they expect you to, well that’s their problem not mine.

Happy Friday!