All Clear at the Dermatologist

I was perched on the doctor's table this morning, wearing a paper gown that opens in the back and rips at the crotch when you sit. My dermatologist usually keeps me waiting before barging in and hurriedly scanning my moles for signs of cancer. We’d rarely spoken for more than a minute.

"How are things?" he said upon entering.

"Dermatological things, or life things?"

"What's going on with you?"

I made a comment about the madness of having a president working to convince millions of Americans that journalists are the enemy. Twenty-five minutes later—other patients waiting with their own genitals exposed be damned—we're still in the midst of a concerted discussion about voting rights and democratic erosion, and what the Supreme Court's lurch to the right portends for the viability of the American experiment. There's a degree of passion and concern that I've never before seen on his Botoxed face.

Cancer is scary. By the time you realize it has spread—through a body, through a country—it's often too late.