SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Time now for "My Unsung Hero," our series with the team at Hidden Brain. "My Unsung Hero" tells the stories of people whose kindness left a lasting impression on someone else. Today, we bring you a story from Jackie Briggs. She met her hero at a women's health conference in 2006.
JACKIE BRIGGS: For several years, I'd been working 60-hour work weeks in this high-pressure IT job, and I had very little time for myself. So I really wanted to go and hear this one particular speaker. As a few hundred women milled around different booths, picking up brochures and eating crudites, this lovely dark-haired woman came up to me, and she said, excuse me, but I can't help but notice your arm. I had what my boss later described as what he thought was a rose tattoo. It was on my upper right bicep. And I was uncharacteristically wearing a sleeveless dress that day.
Well, this woman - she asked me if I'd seen a dermatologist about this smallish, irregular, almost birthmark-looking spot, and I assured her I had. She pressed me and said, when? And I had to stop to think, and I counted back the months and, no, years. It had been over three years. I was supposed to follow up, but I was so caught up in my job, I never did. The dermatologist office never reached out to me, either, so blah, blah, blah. Time moves on.
So this woman urged me to call my doctor Monday morning, first thing. She explained she was a nurse for a plastic surgeon, and as she gently touched my arm, she said, really, don't wait. And thanks to her, I didn't wait. In the following weeks of doctor's appointments, biopsies and then the surgery, are all a bit of a blur, but - because everything moved very fast. But my melanoma was removed, and my six-inch ragged scar that travels almost from the top of my shoulders, down my arm, is my everyday reminder of her. If I hadn't listened to her, I probably wouldn't be here. So to my hero, thank you for my life.
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DETROW: Jackie Briggs of Portland, Oregon. Jackie says about two years after that conference and her melanoma surgery, she quit that 60-hour-a-week IT job. She's now happily retired, tries to hike about 20 miles a week and has finished writing her first novel. You can find more stories like this at hiddenbrain.org.
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