I Beat Cancer!

Earlier this year, I was working in my garden. I’d taken off my shirt, most likely in a misguided attempt to tan. You see, I’ve never been able to brown, only burn, my skin turning various shades of pink and red. Yet this has never dissuaded me from trying, only to see every attempt end slathered in aloe vera or, on one occasion, in the emergency room.

This particular morning, I was repairing the damage that my dogs had done to Jenny’s flowerbeds when I noticed a previously unnoticed mole halfway between my left nipple and the bottom of my ribcage. There was nothing particularly concerning about the mole, apart from the suddenness of its appearance. However, concern eventually won the day and I scheduled an appointment with a dermatologist, Dr. Karishma Daryanani. The consult would be $60 and I could get a full body scan for another $100, which sounded like a deal to me.

I’m not sure why I decided to go to a dermatologist, if I’m being honest. Cancer wasn’t the sort of thing that happened to guys like me, which is, I believe, how most people see this sort of thing, and no one in my family had ever had any sort of cancer that I’d heard about.

Whatever the reason, I soon found myself in the exam room of Dr. Daryanani, who didn’t like the look of that mole. Her argument was solid. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘Why risk it? Let’s cut it out and send it to the pathologist. It’s either cancerous or, if it’s not now, has the potential to become so in the future.’ I later found out that American dermatologists don’t remove these sorts of moles, arguing that only 20% of them become cancerous. Now, I’m in the camp that 20% is a lot when it comes to chances of getting cancer, so I’m 100% with Dr. Daryanani on this one. Cut. It. Out.

I realize that this reticence to remove is most likely due to this procedure costing an average of around $5,000 in the United States, compared to the $500 I paid in Panama. We all know that those American insurance companies have our best interests at heart.

The mole was removed right there and then and I was stitched and bandaged up. Overall, everything else looked good, but there was something, I’m still not sure what, that had the doctor concerned. See, my entire life I had had symptoms such as excessive thirst and hunger and frequent urination. I’d been sent to doctor after doctor, specialist after specialist, but all of the tests always came back good or at least within a reasonable deviation from the acceptable range. Dr. Daryanani ordered the same tests as everyone else, but added an insulin resistance test. She had a hunch.

I returned to her office a few weeks later to receive a double whammy. The first punch: I had cancer. Yes, the mole was indeed cancerous. The bad kind. The kind that spreads. The kind that kills. Luckily, it was still at stage 1A. I was going to have to see an oncologist, but first she had to remove more, much more of the skin around my healing scar. This time, the procedure hurt. My skin was bruised from the trauma of the stitches pulling such disparate pieces of flesh together. 

The second punch: I had diabetes. Most people are aware of genetic Type 1 diabetes, where people’s bodies don’t create enough insulin. Well, I had the much rarer genetic Type 2 diabetes. Basically, I was creating so much insulin that my body was ignoring it. The problem was that my sugar levels were unaffected and within the acceptable ranges on all of the tests, so no one had ever thought to explore this possibility, especially when I was a skinny 18-year-old kid.

Dr. Daryanani prescribed metformin. I took my first pill at seven that night. By nine my entire life had changed. It’s honestly difficult to describe. My vision became unblurred and my eyes stopped hurting. A pain in my left foot went away. The pervasive numbness in my fingers and hands vanished. I was no longer thirsty. I slept an entire night without needing to get up to go to the bathroom. You see, most of this stuff I’d either lived with my entire life or explained away as the result of growing older or working blue collar jobs.

I told my sister to tell her doctor, reckoning that since the condition was genetic, that she or her son might have it as well. Her doctor was sceptical, as the results of my sister's tests were all fine, but ordered a separate insulin resistance test. The test came back showing that my sister also had Type 2 diabetes.

And then my results came in from the pathologist: Dr. Daryanani had removed all of the cancerous cells. I was now cancer free! I’d still have to meet with an oncologist and get checked every six months or so, but, at least for the moment, I had a clean bill of health! Dr. Daryanani had not only saved me from cancer, but saved me (and my sister) from the symptoms of diabetes.

I recommend that everyone, especially if you’re exposed to the tropical sun here in Panama, give her office a call at +507 6747-7783 and schedule an appointment as soon as possible. She can even make a mole map to track if anything new pops up without you noticing!