I surprised my mom for her 70th birthday by driving 10 hours to spend the weekend with her. We had a great time. A lot of it was spent bingeing on a show called Dr. Pimple Popper. I had heard of the show but never seen it before this visit and it was captivating. I have a reasonably high tolerance for gross stuff (so long as smell isn’t involved…I can’t take bad smells) and seeing the different types of skin ailments (and watching her “pop” them) was surprisingly riveting. A lot of people leave fatty tumors to grow and grow until they become burdensome. Like, some of these tumors were the size of baseballs! WTF? How do you not want to deal with that shit asap? My only guess is that the clients don’t have health insurance, so going to the doctor isn’t so simple. If I get three pimples at the same time, I’ma headin’ to the doctor. I guess I have economic privilege.

I was really struck by a brother and sister who live with neurofibromatosis, a genetic disease that creates tumors at the ends of your nerves. The two of them had tumors all over their bodies, but the brother’s case was much worse. The sister had smaller bumps all over her face, whereas her brother had rather large ones. And the bumps hurt (they are on nerves, after all) The disease is incurable, but the sister visited Dr. Pimple Popper in hopes that she may be able to help with some of the bumps on her face. The Dr. burned some of them off, and the sister noticed a difference after her face had healed, but I didn’t see a huge difference.

What struck me about them, though, and especially her, was the complete equanimity with which she approached her situation. She had had this condition since she was a child. She got it from her dad’s side of the family. Her mom said if she’d had any idea how difficult living with the disease would be, she wouldn’t have had children. Neither the sister nor brother are having children for that reason. She talks about people staring, asking questions. About feeling unattractive. About being in pain. But her personality was lovely—her kindness and friendliness came through and soon enough it was easy to look beyond her skin condition. I kept thinking, Would I have the depth of character to deal with such a potentially devastating situation with such equanimity? Do I have the depth of character to deal with a disfiguring accident? Without losing myself completely—succumbing to depression. How much of my understanding of myself is tied to what I look like? To be completely frank, I’m not sure I have that depth of character. It concerns me a bit.