Mike Schmidt...cancer

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''I'm a very lucky man,'' he said. Schmidt felt most fortunate that he got a ''crusty little thing'' on his hand checked out in August.

A dermatologist decided to give him a full examination and found a mole on his back. A biopsy revealed the melanoma was more serious than stage 1, and Schmidt spent the following months shuttling between Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and his home in Jupiter, Fla.

''I've done just about everything I can to destroy the cancer cells in my body,'' he said. Along the way, his voice became raspy, he lost his taste buds and he had trouble concentrating.

He said he also had surgery to remove 35 lymph nodes, wound up with an 8-inch scar and endured episodes of chills and restless leg syndrome.

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''The older you get ... you still carry some sort of invincibility,'' he said, later adding, ''the moral of the story is everybody get checked.''

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