Desmond took Dr. Voss’s advice seriously, starting grief counseling three weeks after Nora came home, working specifically with a therapist who’d handled anticipatory health anxiety cases before, given how directly his fear tied back to watching our mother’s actual illness unfold in real time.
Nora had her first dermatology appointment at six weeks old, with a pediatric specialist named Dr. Okafor who spent nearly forty minutes with Desmond and Renee, walking them through exactly what ongoing monitoring would look like, answering every anxious question Desmond brought with him on a folded piece of paper he’d clearly been adding to for days beforehand.
“The nevus itself isn’t actively concerning right now,” Dr. Okafor told them, at that first appointment. “We’ll photograph it today as a baseline, and every visit after this, we compare against that baseline for any changes. Most families in your situation, once they get through the first year of regular monitoring without any concerning changes, find the anxiety settles considerably. I understand that’s easier to say than to actually experience, especially given your family history, but the process itself is designed specifically to catch problems early, long before they become anything close to what your mother went through.”
