Modeling with Melanoma

I sat on a small bench in the dressing room.  I unwrapped the small square plastic package, it was about the size of a tissue.  As I slowly pulled out its contents, it finally hit me what I was about to do.  I started laughing out loud.  Really?  They wanted me to do this?

When Bill was in graduate school and after, we were poor. The debt was piling up and I started to question if a degree from the University of Chicago would really be worth what we were paying.  I started to concoct ideas of how we could make money, to make a small dent in the costs of student housing, health insurance, and food.  Two of  my "assets" at the time were two beautiful little girls.  I started researching child modeling.  I could sell their faces, get free products and earn a little cash.  Embarrassing to admit now, I entered them in photo contests trying to get them noticed so I could make money.  I saw modeling studios and what they looked like, large white backdrop, huge filtered lights on metal stands with black wings and photographers with cameras trying to capture the spirit of the child, while marketing the clothes they were wearing.  Despite my efforts, my children never got noticed and I never made the few extra dollars I wanted to pay off student loans.  

The image of a photo studio setting was stored in the back of my brain from those aspiring model days and it was triggered when they called me, "Ms. Allyson Davidson" to the Mayo Clinic Dermatology photo lab.   I walked through a small office with a desk, red and white stripped mints sitting in a candy bowl and two smiling women in their twenties welcoming me, trying to make me feel at ease.  One of the friendly   women and I walked into the next room which looked like a professional photo studio, with a white backdrop and huge lights.  She showed me into a small changing room at the back, handed me the tissue sized package, and gave me instructions on what would happen.  I completely undressed and put on the small, black disposable thong that I had just unwrapped.  I walked out, completely naked except for the thong, leaving my pride in the dressing room.  

The smiling woman instructed me where and how to stand in front of the white backdrop, "Hands out to your side and right leg forward, please."  I wondered if she could see the silvery faint stretch marks on my hips caused by my body expanding five times trying to make room for five babies, in addition to all the other flaws of my forty one year-old body.  The lights flashed a faint, "boom" and the large camera clicked away and she captured all of me, nooks and crannies included, through her lens.  "Arms above your head...turn around...hold up your hair..."  She got out a cane for me to hold onto as I lifted one leg than the other so she could photograph the soles of my feet, I snickered under my breath.  I wondered how many women had stood practically nude with a geriatric cane on a studio set.  In photographing my body, the doctors are trying to map and examine every spot and mole, tracking any changes or growths in the future.  It is really an act of faith by the doctors, that I will beat Miss Mellie on the inside and that they might have to worry about her appearing on the outside in the future.  

As I was getting dressed after my "photo shoot" I surprised myself by thinking, "You know, that actually wasn't that bad, all things considering."  While I have some things I would like to change about my body, I was grateful for my body and that I was well enough to walk into the studio to be photographed that day.   Although deadly cancer rages inside me, the outside looks relatively healthy and my body told the story of my life's experiences, scars, wrinkles, sags and stretch marks  The good and the bad and I was grateful for it all.   I walked out, with the black thong tucked in my purse so I had evidence of what I wore, grabbed a few mints and popped one into my smiling mouth.

(Don't worry, I won't post any pictures from my photo shoot!)

Ruth and Grace whose modeling careers never took off....