Tethered

Once upon a time, I asked a young oncologist who has doing his post-residency fellowship training at my favorite melanoma clinic why he’d chosen melanoma research and treatment as his sub-specialty. His response was that he wanted to be a part of finding a cure, so that patients like me wouldn’t be tethered to the clinic for the rest of their lives. Good answer, don’t you think?

My biopsy/lumpectomy experience last November served to remind me how very tethered to that same clinic (and melanoma) I still am. I still show up at least a couple of times a year to spin the diagnostic wheel of fortune and do what I’m told. But “the cure” being the elusive dream that it is and may always be, and knowing that melanoma could still work me like a yo-yo but hasn’t, life at the end of melanoma’s string sure beats the alternative. Nevertheless, I’m not giving up the dream of someday cutting the cord and busting out of The Hotel Melanoma.

To the tune of “Wrapped Around Your Finger” from The Police…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svWINSRhQU0




You consider me just one of tenants
Caught between your Scylla and Charybdis
Victimized by you but I have lingered
Staring at the skin that I have cindered

I have only some years ‘til my dotage
Skin braised good and creased and blotched with wattage
I can see the destiny you sold
Turned into a whining batch of moles

I'll be wrapped around your finger
I'll be wrapped around your finger

Mephistopheles is not your name
I know what you're up to just the same
I am wishin’ hard for your remission
You will see it come to its fruition

I'll be wrapped around your finger
I'll be wrapped around your finger

Devil and the deep blue sea behind me?
Vanish in the air you'll never find me
I have turned my flesh to alabaster
Then you will find your servant is your master

Ohhh, you'll be wrapped around my finger
You'll be wrapped around my finger
You'll be wrapped around my finger