<h1>Big "C", Little "c"</h1>

I first started seeing my dermatologist for reasons of vanity. He removed those purple spots that seem to pop up as we age. He is a chatty fellow with a fast draw with the liquid nitrogen spray. Each time I visit him, he hits me with the spray. I end up looking as if I have been in a street fight. But it works! Like magic the spots disappear. He is a good doctor but he is always late, usually because he is so thorough. Each visit he carefully goes over my body with a magnifying glass looking for melanoma, the Big "C". This time he found something. Not the Big "C" but a little "c" - basal cell carcinoma.

Apparently it is no big deal.

I wasn't surprised when he found it. From the time I was little, I spent too much time in the sun, usually producing an agonizing sunburn.

He is going to remove the little devil in a few days. The whole issue got me thinking of a study I had read (I think I mentioned in an earlier entry) about the relationship between melanoma and PD. The conclusion reached was a bit troubling. Try this little gem on for size:

June 6, 2011 -- People with Parkinson's disease are at increased risk for developing melanoma, a potentially fatal form of skin cancer, a study shows. The new findings appear in Neurology. Close to 1 million people in the U.S. have Parkinson's disease, a progressive neurological disease marked by tremors and difficulty with movement and walking. The researchers analyzed 12 studies of people with both Parkinson's disease and melanoma. These studies were conducted from 1965 and 2010, and most had fewer than 10 people with both conditions. When compared to those without Parkinson's disease, men with Parkinson's were twice as likely to develop melanoma. Women with Parkinson's disease were 1.5 times as likely to be diagnosed with this form of skin cancer. Parkinson's disease was not associated with an increased risk of other types of skin cancer.

Read all about it.

Things change. I googled PD and basal cell only to find, on top of all else, research that suggests we have to be a trifle concerned about the little "c" as well. It turns out there just might be a connection between PD and basal cell. There is little evidence but there is some. I won't bore you with the details. You can read what I glanced at here.

Some people have all the luck. I am not complaining; I am just suggesting, with a hint of a whine, that lately all my luck has been a tad bad.

I surely won't be buying any lottery tickets until this run of bad luck is through with me. That would be akin to me paying a tax on stupidity.