2025's Finale Got Me Good

Fuck this bitch-ass year.

Hi friends!

I was planning a very different recap for this year, but things took a pretty dramatic and horrifying turn last week. I’m not even talking about the anti-Semitic mass shooting in Australia, where I’m headed tomorrow to spend the holidays with my Jewish brother and Australian mishpocha in Queensland. Or the horrific murder of Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele, that happened in the city I live in and shocked the industry I work in.

On Tuesday, I found out that I have melanoma. So … now there’s also that.

Before you start worrying too hard about me, my murder freckle is stage 0 and is literally the most treatable form of cancer there is. Stage 0 melanoma has a 99.9% survival rate after removal and removing it is all you need to do. I have been assured by two different doctors that this poses no threat to my health once it’s taken care of. So, based on my experience this past week, I’m going to assume that the tragic 0.1% jumped off a bridge after talking to a dermatologist at Kaiser Permanente.

This mole seemed nefarious as soon as it appeared on my arm a few years ago. It was admittedly so irregular looking that multiple friends and family members begged me to get it checked. Over Labor Day weekend, my cousin Snacky was in town and upon meeting my dear friend Amy at a pool party — with my irregular mole on full display — they bonded over how worried they both were about it. You would think that level of loving concern and bullying would have sent me to the dermatologist, but no, I waited until another gross skin thing was too painful to be ignored.

I’m self-employed, which means that I have to buy my own health insurance, and since I am generally in great health and never go to the doctor if I can avoid it, I am a member of a cheap HMO called Kaiser Permanente. And the thing about Kaiser Permanente is that their approach to health care is a user experience that involves answering questions in an app to make an appointment to talk to a random doctor on the phone who will tell you to go to Urgent Care where you will be triaged by a nurse who will take your blood pressure (it will be shockingly high due to heart-pounding anxiety) and then a doctor will eventually appear to decide whether you get “preventative care” or should be taken out back to be shot and put out of your misery.

When I told the random phone doctor that I needed to see a dermatologist for my gross skin thing she told me that I needed to go to Urgent Care and that dermatology wouldn’t accept a referral because they only deal with mole checks and skin cancer. So, I used the irregular mole as my way in and she got me a referral. I did go to Urgent Care where they sort of helped me, but it was a cortisone shot from the dermatologist I scammed my way into a week later that healed me. When I showed her my mole she said it needed a biopsy and then told me that there was a good chance that it was cancer, but even if it was, it wouldn’t harm me. So, I took deep breaths as she marked it up, took a photo of it so a surgeon would know where exactly it was on my body, then shaved a chunk out of my arm.

I went home and only had a minor panic attack. Not too bad, all things considered. But I got it together, drank some water, and met my friend for lunch. After that, I was pretty zen about all of it and surprisingly didn’t spiral into researching the worst case scenario.

So, when the doctor called and told me that it was melanoma and then immediately, instead of reassuring me that I would be OK, said the removal was pretty invasive and would leave a massive scar on my arm, I was in shock and wanted to talk about options and asked if a plastic surgeon could close it. She told me that it’s cancer, not a cosmetic issue, and that I should really want the surgical oncologist to do the procedure. Her bedside (phoneside?) manner poured gasoline on the anxious hellfire that was my mind hearing the word “cancer,” so I just asked if she could book the removal with the best surgeon on the team as soon as possible and she said she would be in touch.

I missed the doctor’s call the next day, which was really for the best. When I didn’t answer, she sent me a message in the app with two options for the surgery — a trip to Kaiser’s butcher shop as previously discussed and another option which would leave a smaller scar but would be a multi-day affair and require me going home with an open wound, potentially more than once, so a lab could process the margins overnight. Both terrible options were available at the end of February.

I was sitting outside the Silver Lake Gelson’s, eating some sad bitch soup, under an umbrella because I am Morticia Addams now, when I read the doctor’s message in the app and just knew there had to be a better way.

There obviously is a better way and there’s one doctor in California who specializes in it and his office is in Pasadena which is about a 20-30 minute drive from where I live. He only removes melanoma, does it less invasively, and double checks everything is gone in the lab himself before he stitches you up properly that same day because he has done a million prestigious fellowships and is also trained in plastic and reconstructive surgery. When I found him, I called his office immediately and spoke to the kindest receptionist who could hear my panic and offered to squeeze me in for a rare consult on Friday before the holidays. The catch was that I needed to get my biopsy from Kaiser before the doctor could see me.

When I called Kaiser to ask for my biopsy results, the woman on the phone said it would take at least five business days to process my request. I was so out of my mind that I asked her:

“Do you realize that you work in a factory that treats human beings like animals?”

And I am telling you exactly what I said not because I’m proud of misdirecting my anger at that woman — I was horrified to hear that line fly out of my mouth — but because it worked so effectively that I had the biopsy results in my inbox a mere three hours later. Feel free to make it your own and use it as needed.

I saw the good doctor on Friday and he came into the room with the intention of convincing me that everything would be OK, told me all about his very impressive education and research background, said that my murder freckle isn’t even as deep as a paper cut, and then capped it all off by saying it’s the most common cancer in women 28-35. I love that demo for me.

He assured me that he would do his best to make my scar look as good as possible but that he couldn’t make it invisible. I told him that I don’t care if I have a scar after the prospect of a cleaving on Kaiser’s butcher block. He told me that I had the right attitude. If he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, I would have proposed on the spot.

make it stop.

Last week was my most productive week of the year. I found out I had melanoma on Tuesday, hit a huge pre-holiday work deadline and transcended insurance company bureaucracy on Wednesday, signed a new contract with a big raise I’ve been negotiating for months on Thursday, and got this surgery booked for the end of January with a doctor who I really trust on Friday. Nothing fires up my engines quite like disaster. My life had been so peaceful and I couldn’t get anything done.

I wanted to share all of this because it’s appropriately unhinged and also because it’s now my duty as town crier and village yenta to encourage everyone to go get their weird moles checked. Especially my fellow Ashkenazi Jews — the good doctor told me that we have a higher risk than the general population — as if we needed even one more crumb of tsuris to bear.

And now I know THE melanoma guy, so hit me up if you need his number and we’ll get it taken care of for you. He’s not as expensive as you think, because in America’s fucked up healthcare system, when you don’t go through insurance you often get a better rate. I’m very grateful that I have the means to pay it.

I’m going to go on my trip and try not to think about all of this. Then, I’m aiming for a calm and cozy start to the year until I deal with the removal of it all at the end of next month.

This year has humbled me. But that’s OK — it’s good to be humble. I know I’m not alone in ending 2025 a little worse for wear. This was the Year of the Snake in the Chinese zodiac and it seems I am exiting its transformative torture chamber by having a layer of skin surgically removed. Feels a little too on the nose, but it is what it is.

I’ll check in with you guys when I’m back and settled in. I think I have the theme for next year so I shall reveal it to you then.

Thank you for all of your support in 2025. It’s time to roll the credits on this godforsaken year.

Less Lessons More Blessin’s™

Liz