Right before Burning Man.
I had a basal cell carcinoma scraped off my back on August 15, 2022. The timing was impeccable. Ten days before Burning Man.
I attended anyway, which the dermatologist did not specifically recommend but also did not specifically prohibit. The Rangers have a medic team. I changed the dressing every other day. The medics on staff at Ranger Outpost Berlin helped. The playa dust got into everything else; apparently it stayed out of the wound.
Getting your skin cancer scraped off and then going to the desert is not, on reflection, the most conservative choice I’ve made. The playa is a dry lake bed covered in alkaline dust. The sun is extreme. The conditions are categorically the opposite of what a healing wound prefers.
But the timing was what it was, and Burning Man 2022 was my first burn since 2016, and some things outweigh sensible dermatology.
The wound healed. The scar is still there, back of the shoulder. The basal cells stayed gone. I mention this mainly because I get regular skin checks now, which I should have been doing earlier, which I mention in case you’re also a person who spends a lot of time outdoors and hasn’t been to a dermatologist recently.
Go to the dermatologist.