When I started my breast cancer journey more than 12 years ago, I had to get through a lot. Everyone who has breast cancer has to get through a lot.

Breast cancer is just a lot. Actually, any cancer is just a lot. And it is a lot to deal with.

I wrote my way through breast cancer with all of you, and like a lot of breast cancer survivors, I ended up with a second cancer. That second cancer is skin cancer.

Skin cancer is no joke. I started having regular dermatology appointments because that’s what my oncologist told me I needed to do going forward after being treated for breast cancer with radiation and taking breast cancer meds.

So, as I’ve written before, I have had no cases of melanoma, but have had basal cell and squamous cell. I have now had three Mohs surgeries, and this past Thursday, I had post cancer reconstruction under general anesthesia on the back of my head where the last Mohs surgery was.

The surgeon and the nurses at Penn Presbyterian Hospital in Philadelphia were amazing. But it was a super long day.

I had a 2 PM surgery and I was on time, but there were people ahead of me in preop with various surgeons, but I think kind of held me up. It’s a big hospital and that happens. There was someone who was dehydrated and they couldn’t find a vein to start the IV before surgery so they had to rehydrate that patient. Then there was a woman across from me who was prepped and ready for surgery and very fidgety, and something wasn’t right with her insurance so that held everything up. And that kind of amazes me the whole thing with health insurance. Here we are as patient trying to use what we’re paying for and we’ve done all of our preparation but they haven’t finished wrangling I guess with a hospital system.