ARLINGTON, Va. - Walking with my surgeon from the exam room to his office to schedule my impending surgery, I told him it was my wife’s concern about an unsightly mole on my back that sent me to a dermatologist.
The surgeon, Dr. Robert Stone Baxt, wheeled around and impassionedly stated, "Your wife saved your life.”
Here’s the skinny on skin—function, form, beauty, it does it all. Skin is the body’s largest organ. This waterproof barrier breathes, sweats, cools, provides sensation, absorbs vitamins, and is a thing of beauty even though it is often vilified for not being deeper. But, I never knew that.
As children, my brother and I lived the lives of modern-day Tom Sawyers in the Missouri Ozarks. Typically, we wore a pair of jeans everyday—no shoes, no shirt. Little did we know that our skin’s number one enemy--that jolly old Sun--was planting the seeds of destruction that would erupt under my skin with deadly promise.
I had visited a dermatologist for an annual exam every year. After he retired, I was examined by the doctor, who took over his practice, and he did not share the concern that my wife continued to voice.
Finally, I got a referral from my internist for his dermatologist and made an unscheduled visit the next morning. I ambushed Dr. Charles Samorodin outside of his locked office.
Immediately, he said he did not like the looks of my odious mole, and he was going to take a biopsy. "You should thank your wife,” he said as he excised a piece of my back, "for getting you here when she did.”
Subsequently, Dr. Samorodin got the dermatopathologist’s report and asked me to come and see him. He said I had advanced dysplasia, a pre-cancerous condition, and I would have to have surgery to ensure removal of all the tissue that could turn malignant. He recommended a surgeon and I agreed.
Dr. Samorodin is a true patriot. Following medical school, he volunteered for the Army and Vietnam. He served a tour in South Vietnam during 70-71 with the 199th Light Infantry Brigade, and later, in Long Binh. Dr. Samorodin was awarded the Bronze Star for a medical program he initiated that impressed the brass in Saigon.
After leaving active service, he stayed in the Army Reserve providing much needed medical services to our soldiers for a total of 20 years.
My surgeon also turned out to be a Vietnam veteran. He served as a U.S. Navy flight surgeon working helicopter medical-evacuations.
I honor these two patriots for their military service and for the skills of diagnosis and surgery that will truly save my life, but also and especially a wife who looked at my beautiful skin and saw something ugly.