Betty Blogger

Mole. The word has several meanings. It can refer to a secretly embedded informant or conjure visions of a dark skin spot. In my case, mole meant both.

I was lying in bed feeling the happy little kicks of the life growing inside me. I was seven months pregnant with a girl! My son, just over a year old, was sleeping soundly in his crib. Still and silent, the night was filled with promise. I felt lucky.

Then I noticed a spot that looked like a ladybug right next to my belly button. Had it always been there, I wondered? Weird that I never spotted it before. But then again, my stomach wasn't always pressing up into my face like an aggressive basketball pass.

My husband was on a trip to New Zealand for two weeks, so I had no one to ask. When he returned, I pulled up my maternity top and pointed to my belly button. "Did I always have this Cindy Crawford thingie here?" I asked.

"Nope," he said. "That's new."

Immediately, I made an appointment with a dermatologist. She snipped it right out. Two stitches and I was perfectly fine. Or so I thought.

A couple of days later I was in New York for a friend's funeral. Feeling ill, my friend had driven himself to the hospital, where he later died from a heart attack. He was 46, and left a wife and high school junior behind. The service was heart rending, to say the least. Looking to be distracted from the sadness of the day, I checked my messages on the way back to the airport. There was a voicemail from the derm.

"Melina, it's Friday afternoon and I need to speak with you urgently," she said. "I'm bringing your chart home, call me right away." She left her home phone number.

I called, but no answer. After a sleepless night, I finally reached the doctor the following morning. She informed me that the pathology report was not what she thought it would be. In fact, it indicated that I had melanoma.

"Melanoma is very aggressive in pregnant women. We need to make sure that it hasn't gotten into your lymph nodes yet," she said. "I'm calling the best specialist in the city, and you need to see him first thing Monday morning. This is serious."

I was in shock. My younger sister has had cancer five times, but my biggest health issue has always been my weight fluctuation. My husband looked as stricken as I felt, his mouth a grim line as we sat on the floor and stacked blocks with our baby.

I sang "You are my Sunshine" and made little alphabet towers. But on the inside, I was barreling toward a dark place. That night I was plagued with questions. What if...? Who would take care of my husband and raise my thirteen-month-old son? What was to happen to the baby daughter growing within me? As my husband slept, I slunk down to the kitchen and went through my filofax. I starred the single friends I thought he could remarry so my kids would have a nice mom.

Monday morning, the second doctor allayed my fears somewhat by assuring me that we had caught this early, and the cancer had not yet spread to my lymph nodes. He told me we'd be able to get it with surgery without harming the baby.

"How could I have even gotten skin cancer?" I asked. "My stomach has almost never been in the sun." For once I was grateful for my weight issue, which kept me in one pieces instead of bikinis.

"While some doctors attribute melanoma to sun, I think it's due to stress," he says. "My advice to you is to avoid stress as much as possible." I laughed at loud at the irony of his Don't Worry, Be Happy advice, considering I was pregnant and about to have my midsection cut open.

Shot up with local anesthetic, I watched in the reflection of the floral print as the team excised the enemy and closed me up with 37 stitches.

Sore, but happy to have the experience behind me, I went for my checkup several days later.

"Looking good," the doctor declared. "You seem to be healing nicely."

"Thank you, I am so grateful," I said, hugging him, which took him by surprise.

"So, we'll have to biopsy the placenta at birth," the doctor said. "There is a chance that you could have passed the cancer on to the baby. It's small, but it's real."

This news was even harder to face than my initial diagnosis. The thought that I could have put my unborn child in harm's way was too much to bear. A sadness pulled its cover over me and settled in for the rest of my pregnancy. This mole had been a wake-up sign. My life was so stressful it was making me sick.

My joy was now muffled by sadness and fear during the birth, and the ten days after the delivery. My beautiful daughter looked like a perfectly healthy angel. But I was too scared to jinx it until I had the test results, irrationally believing that if I kept a worry vigil, she would be spared.

I did, and she was.

This was three years ago. I go for mandatory skin checks every three months. Twelve cancer-free screenings later, the relief still washes over me like a shower as soon the derm gives me the "all's clear."

Still, I wonder. Is the mole still embedded in my unsuspecting cells, waiting to slap me silly with another wake-up call? Although the mole was the size of a ladybug, it came with a gigantic warning sign. If the mole could talk, it would have said to me: You can't do it all. If you continue to try and be Superwoman, working, writing, blogging, grocery shopping, playground hopping, sippy-cup fetching, yoga going, the stress will spill from your brain to your body and activate me. I will come back, and you will wind up in a very dark place. And so will your kids.

Avoiding stress means making some radical changes. What do I keep and what do I give up? These choices are daily, momentous, and miniscule. Pack the weekend with kid activities or plan nothing? Eat the Easter candy while they sleep or rejoin on Weight Watchers? Continue to put energy into a marriage that isn't working or call it a day? Sometimes the obvious choice is clear to everyone but me, because my heart is blocking my vision.

Avoid stress, the doctor advised. It's like sunscreen for the soul. I'll have to try it one of these days.

"Look Mom, a ladybug," says my daughter, Mackenzie, now three, as we sit on our back deck enjoying spring's summer-hot day.

"Make a wish," I tell her, as the good-luck bug flits away.

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