If you know me, you know that I have a lot of moles. Seems to be prevalent on my German side, so I never thought much of it growing up. I had a couple raised ones that got annoying when I was younger, so I had them removed (and one was biopsied, negative for cancer), but even then I don’t think it really hit home just how serious it was. I have definitely had sunburns, and I definitely don’t wear sunscreen as often or as well as I should.
Well, kind of hard to ignore it all once a mole completely changes.
I used to have a mole on my right forearm. Decent size, enough for me to know it’s there and notice when it’s not. So one day, about 3 years ago maybe, I notice a bump where my mole used to be. Assumed I had scratched it or something, so I left it alone. It never went back to normal, and it still hurt when I would bump it, but I have this anxiety about scheduling things so I ignored it. Then another bump popped up behind my ear (spoiler: that one turned out to be a pimple, it just wasn’t ready to pop when I had originally thought it was a pimple I guess). Then I noticed another mole looked like it was breaking apart or something. Weird, right?
Anyways, I still had the anxiety going on, but back in September 2021 I heard someone’s skin cancer story that started out with similar symptoms, so I decided to check the online scheduler for Allina. I was able to schedule an appointment with a dermatologist without needing to call anyone about it. Success!
The doctor wasn’t concerned with most of the spots I pointed out, but agreed it was worth getting the one on my right forearm and the one that was breaking apart biopsied. I was just excited the bump would finally be gone. Anyways, the following week (when results were supposed to have shown up), I got a call from him. I wasn’t able to answer, but I checked the message later, and basically: one of the samples had to be sent to the Mayo for further testing. Scary, right? But it’s still pandemic times, so maybe it’s normal? Still no update after a week. Then two.
Then finally, over a month later, I got a call while driving to Dominos with my 6 year old in the car. It’s never good news when they call, especially when it’s 6pm.
So Mayo had to do special genetic testing on the sample from my forearm. I guess it’s typically a cancer found in children, so it’s rare it’s found so late? It was officially labeled Malignant Melanoma with Spitzoid Morphology. And unfortunately for me, the sample they got didn’t fully remove the cancer, which of course means: surgery. So I met with a surgeon, and since it was at least 1.1mm thick, he recommended doing sentinel lymph node biopsies at the same time as the wide local excision, to see if the cancer is spreading through my system.
So, December 2, 2021, I dropped kids off at school/daycare, and headed to my mom’s house. We went to Mercy Hospital around 10am, and I got some radioactive stuff injected in the skin surrounding the remains of my mole. Then I went to the waiting area for the actual surgery. Since the radioactive stuff took time to reach the lymph nodes, I knew I’d be waiting a bit, so I had brought my kindle. Ended up not actually waiting all that long before they brought me to a bed to get changed and get prepped. Almost used a chlorhexidine wipe to prep the area, thankfully I double-checked. (Spoiler though, I ended up with a rash regardless, so that was fun)
The rest of the time in bed before surgery was uneventful, but I was able to get in early so that was cool. Woke up to my forearm bandaged, and when the nurse went to bring my mom back, Ron surprised me! He was able to get off work early and switched places with my mom. So he hung out with me while I recovered. Probably super boring, cause I woke up with an ear ache and went back to sleep for a bit. Next time I woke up, my ears were clogged, so that was annoying. Had to stay a while to deal with the nausea from the anesthesia, but finally was able to leave and get Chipotle for dinner.
As for the biopsies. They took 4 lymph nodes. All clean! And the melanoma was fully contained in the tissue removed from my forearm, so unless there’s melanoma elsewhere on my body, or some other cancer we don’t know about yet — I’m cancer-free! As far as cancers go, it really was among best-case scenarios. Especially considering I ignored the bump for two and a half years before seeing anyone about it.
So now, I have to do skin checks every 3 months for a year, once or twice a year after that; I’ll see my surgeon again in June for another follow-up to make sure surgery went well and everything’s healing properly still (first follow-up looked good); and when it’s been a full year since my surgery I’ll be able to donate blood again.
And of course, now I have this experience to motivate me to do better with sunscreen…
