“Doc, I want you to drain my blood blisters,” was the request of a sixty-six-year-old man. He told us the “blisters” had been coming out for the past two months. He also told us that three or four months ago he had felt a lump over his left shoulder blade area. It was painless, but getting bigger.

When he slipped off his shirt we saw several hundred black bumps on his chest and back. They were not blood blisters, but hard pitch-black tumors generally ranging in size from a pinhead to a walnut. The largest one on the back was an irregular lobulated mass three inches in diameter. Only a few small lesions dotted his face and arms.

As we took his history the problem became more ominous. He had been a construction worker all his life, going shirtless in the summer months, with no attempt to use sunscreens. He was retired and lived alone, with no one to tell him that the mole on his back had begun to enlarge and turn black. His health had been good until recently, when he noted how easily he became short of breath and that his legs were becoming swollen.

Sadly, we had to tell him there were no blisters to drain. We explained that only by sampling his skin tumors and studying them under the microscope would we solve the mystery of his lesions. We told him we feared he had a very serious problem.