A comment that gets brought up repeatedly by Zoomerist readers is a version of this email from D. Hampton of Aurora: “You keep telling us to see a doctor before doing or trying anything. C’mon, who can find a doctor these days? Mine retired and I am on waiting lists all over town!” 

We hear you, D. It’s rough out there. And no wait feels longer than for a dermatologist. As a natural blond who burns in the beat of an eyelash when any body part is exposed to sun, suspicious moles keep me up at night. 

So when I saw on Instagram that one of my favourite dermatologists, Dr. Julia Carroll, was riding around in something called the Mole Mobile, I rang her up to find out more about it. The Mole Mobile, an RV kitted out with a medical examination suite, asks dermatologists to volunteer for a day providing intensive spot- and full-body checks, predominantly in under-serviced rural and Indigenous areas. “I’m on the board for Melanoma Canada. It’s a patient-support and advocacy group,” Carroll says. “The patients I see while I’m on the road tell me they can’t even get in to see a dermatologist. A lot of the time, things are absolutely fine. But you can see how it allays patients’ fears. They have been carrying around these worries. It also stops them consulting Dr. Google.”

That said, the physicians sometimes do find problematic moles. Of the 3,583 screenings done since May 1, says Falyn Katz, the CEO of Melanoma Canada, the team has found 403 suspicious lesions, including 75 melanomas.