Reading my skin

I met my new dermatologist yesterday. He came in swinging his canister of liquid nitrogen as dermatologists do. He gave me the once-over as dermatologists do. As a regular, I should be used to it by now. But I find it very disconcerting. Maybe it’s just that he’s my new dermatologist (my old one moved to Stoney Creek). He’s talking to me but the whole time he’s sweeping my skin with his eyes. He has special close-up vision. He can spot a freckle gone wrong in an instant. He knows what’s he’s looking for and he knows that I am someone who may give him cause to pause in his reading, to make him stop and reread me. It’s not necessarily complexity he’s finding, it’s anomaly. But it’s intimate. He’s reading and rereading me, my skin. Since we had never met before, he asked me the usual questions about where I grew up (to determine my potential past sun damage), what I do for a living now (my current and potential sun damage), and what I like to do for a good time (just kidding – he wanted to know if I liked outdoor sports like golf (don’t know) & tennis (yes)). He doesn’t really want to get to know me, he just wants enough information to allow him to process and proceed. This is what dermatologists do. All the time he’s talking and I’m talking back, he’s reading me, holding my hand and sweeping his eyes up my arm, across my shoulders and down my other arm. He looks at my face but not the way that anybody else looks at my face. He’s talking in an ordinary way but he’s mentally divided my face up into vertical sections and he’s scanning each section. His head and eyes move vertically. He stops at the bridge of my nose where I had the surgery two years ago and spends a little more time there. He touches the bridge of my nose, smoothes the skin across and he moves his head closer. He checks out my neck, a persistent problem– seems to be under control now. He spritzes my hand with the liquid nitrogen. I’d read it as a small wart but he says not…I’m looking at it right now. It’s red and it looks like a super giant wart. I know it will blister and peel off in a couple of days and smooth out…like my neck…pictured here from a few months ago.