I was visiting my daughter in Canberra in early November when she asked if I could do her a favour and take her 14-month-old to the GP for a check-over. Happy to. We got ready as it was a pleasant spring morning I decided to wear a golf shirt.

When we left the house the weather was cooler than I had anticipated but I decided against going back in to change into a long-sleeved shirt. After all, I had my Rab fleece if it got too cold.

Camilla, my granddaughter, had a sniffle and a runny nose, consequences of spending her days in a preschool. I understand the costs of living make it difficult for people with kids. They have to manage two jobs and spend half or more of one wage on child care just to get by. But I don’t like it.

We arrived at the general medical practice in a nearby suburb, waited a short time while Camilla checked out the waiting room, decided it was okay to get off my knee, and spent a few moments toddling up and down the hallway, adjusting doors and other furniture to her liking.

A youngish doctor came out, called us in and said his name was Sam. All is very well except I want my medicos to be Dr so and so. Not Sam … or Dave.

But he was not my medico, though I acknowledged him by his title whereby he began his investigation of my granddaughter.

Sam concluded that all was well, aside from something called a post-nasal drip which he advised she would get over within a few days. All is well and good.

He then turned and asked me if I had a regular GP. As I had not needed to see one for some months, and, as I regarded the state of corporate medicine with some disdain, I replied in the negative.

He pointed to my right arm to a spot now hidden by my golf shirt and said I needed to see about the blister he had espied. I pulled my shirt sleeve up and sure enough, there was a small blister which, sad to say, I had known about for a few months without giving it much thought.

It was not my intention to return to Sydney for a few more weeks; my wife and I were planning to head to the far south coast.

Sam looked worried. He said I ought to do something about it sooner rather than later. I asked him what I ought to do and his reply was anything but reassuring. He said it needed to come off and to be analysed.

In that moment, standing in his surgery holding my beautiful granddaughter, my mind, which I would say is generally very much alive, became something else. It was as if I had been caught in some vortex, a confluence of time and space where, had events been different, the melanoma which he excised the following day, may have continued on its destructive way.

Two weeks later, in trepidation, I returned to Canberra where Sam gave me the bad news. He had removed a level 4 nodular malignant melanoma with a Breslow thickness of 1.5mm. A small blister on my arm, between elbow and shoulder had transformed itself into a deep, dangerous cancer. Levels of depth range from 1 to 5. Mine was 4.

Sam had never met me before November 2 but by now, two weeks later, he had cut me open and done his research. He advised that I return to Sydney and make an appointment with the Melanoma Institute. He said the next step would be to have a wide local excision, likely with a sentinel node biopsy at the same time.

This was not what I would call good news. My mind went hurtling further into some place it had never been before. Fear was supplanted relatively quickly by dread.

I have never been frightened by the prospect of my death but this unnerved me. My main concern was for those I would no longer see or whose lives I would not be part of – my wife, my daughter, son, and my three beautiful granddaughters.

On returning to Sydney I made an appointment with the Melanoma Institute, saw an excellent GP at Macquarie Uni Health beforehand and began talking to a few mates. Many I knew had suffered similar events with few long-term consequences although another had a bad experience.

My appointment with the surgeon at the Melanoma Institute was heartening. He introduced himself as Dave so I suspect it must be a ‘thing’ for medicos in their 40s. A thing I now happily accept.

He went on to explain that Sam had been dead right and that I would spend a morning at the Alfred Nuclear Medicine Centre and day surgery at the Mater hospital for a local excision and sentinel node biopsy.

It is now a week since the surgery. I have a 10cm wound on my arm with 30 stitches and a similar one under my arm. It will be another week before I have the stitches removed, obtain the results, and listen to the forecast.

Some days I am relatively buoyant. Others, not so. On the bad days I think about my beautiful Camilla and how it is that she may have saved my life.

Richard Stanton’s most recent book Good Eggs & Odd Fish a manifesto for the 70-year-old man is published by Ginninderra Press.