In a time of Tattoo Chic, when it’s popular to permanently mark your skin with personalized artwork, nature and modern medicine have given me a different kind of decoration that tells the story of my suffering, salvation and resilience.
Scars remind us of challenges we’ve overcome, and my newest one is a nearly three inch slash on my left cheek, from surgery to excise a melanoma. I’m grateful to my dermatologist for finding the cancer during a routine skin check, and was totally blindsided that—despite looking at my face in a lighted makeup mirror daily—I’d completely disregarded this small spot. At the time, I was recovering from a biopsy of some suspicious thyroid nodules, which turned out to be benign, when this latest biopsy revealed a potentially fatal form of skin cancer.
“It’s always something,” said my son, the brain surgeon. (Yes, I’m a proud Mama.) “And it’s rarely what you expect.”
This scar is just one of many on my 71-year-old body, and they are all mementos of painful moments in my life. These range from minor accidents, like a few stitches below my chin after a failed trampoline flip in middle school, to major surgeries–including the chest-cracking open-heart procedure I had at age 54 to replace a congenitally-abnormal heart valve and repair a resulting aneurysm. Some, like the two C-section “smiles” on my lower abdomen, are also associated with great joy – the births of my son and daughter. My scars tell the story of my life—of being human, of survival, of bouncing back, of strength.
Fresher and more visible than the others, the scar on my cheek is taking some getting used to—in part because it impacts my facial expressions. “It is very common to have a period of stress, anxiety and mild depression following this type of surgery,” notes the handout from my excellent MOHS surgeon, who did a masterful job of making this scar as unobtrusive as possible. “We all place value on the appearance of our faces, and it is therefore understandable that your emotional response to this surgical procedure may be significant.” Patience is essential, he says, as it may take more than a year for the scar to become “as supple and unnoticeable as desired.” He points to the old adage: Time heals all wounds.
This is so true—as evidenced by a more than 20-year-old scar on my forehead, which is now barely perceptible, from when I fell out of a hospital bed in the neuro-intensive care unit and face planted. I don’t recall that event–which resulted in splitting open my forehead, cracking a tooth and bumping my nose–as I was in a four-day coma caused by drinking too much water during the Reggae Marathon in Jamaica in 2003. (The article I wrote about almost dying from “water intoxication” is still available on the LA Times website: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-apr-18-he-marathon18-story.html)
Remembering the miracle of completely healing from this near-death experience helps put all my other health challenges in perspective. As I add melanoma to my list of potentially life-threatening conditions that require continuous monitoring–including my artificial heart valve, benign brain tumor, pre-cancerous lesions in my eye, and low bone density—I mentally arrange them into a personal Mortality Wheel of Mis-Fortune and wonder which one will take me out. Then I remember my son’s wise words: “It’s always something, but rarely what you expect.” So I do my best to let all that go.
As for my new cheek scar, it’s just one more line on my aging face. And since our faces reflect our emotions and habits of use, I’m doing my best to keep smiling. My healing scar is affected by surrounding musculature, so I’m hoping this turns it into a smile line. Smiling itself is a healing practice that relaxes the muscles in your face, according to the late Zen master, Thich Nhat Hahn, who called smiling “mouth yoga.” Indeed, research suggests that moving facial muscles into an expression of joy can produce feelings of happiness. Smiling “affirms our awareness and determination to live in peace and joy,” wrote Hahn in his book, Peace is Every Step. “Wearing a smile on your face is a sign that you are master of yourself.”
Along with smiling, I’m practicing gratitude. Scars are said to be ugly, but ugly is in the eye of the beholder. I choose to see my Scarface as beautiful—a visible reminder that my life was saved by excellent medical care and healed by divine grace.
