Them’s the Breaks

You may or may not have noticed that I haven’t posted in a while. If you are a Facebook follower you may have also noticed a few posts about cancer and melanoma and lymph nodes and frustration and prayer.

I have written quite a few posts about what is going on but have not posted them for a couple of reasons. First, it made it feel too real and I am really leaning toward the ostrich approach to dealing with this whole mess—head. Buried. Deep. In. Sand. Second, there has just been so much unknown that I didn’t want to post stuff about the big bad potential and then it be out there and then this little spot be just that—a little spot. Third, I don’t want this blog to be a place where I just come to vent, whine, mope, moan. I want to bring solution, opportunity, options, or at very least articulate questions. I have had none of those things in the past month.

But, because things are getting very involved around here and because it is what is going on with me and because I think this may help me to process all of the swirly mess that is my brain right now, I am going to start posting about my melanoma.

So here goes…I have melanoma. I had a new mole last May that I chalked up to a pregnancy granuloma which is completely common and completely normal. I did not think much about it until I started back to work this year and noticed when I cut it shaving that it had gotten significantly raised and wouldn’t stop bleeding. I was still lazy about getting it removed because I was busy with work, the kids, getting into a new groove, I didn’t know a good dermatologist. A whole bunch of crap excuses. Partly, I was afraid. I am a nurse, I am not stupid, and I knew the thing was WRONG!

I work around a lot of nurses with a wide variation of experiences and knowledge. One of them walked up behind me and saw the thing hanging out on the back of my leg and told me to go see a dermatologist. Okay, I said. I know I really need to do that. A couple days later she walked up behind me again. Have you made an appointment? She said. I started to tell her something else in the way of excuse when another co-worker walked up. Look at that thing! The first one said. I have a really great dermatologist, the second one said. She took a mole off my arm that turned out to be a melanoma, she said. I will email you her contact info, she said. Ten minutes later it was in my inbox. Twelve minutes later a voice was coming to me from beyond (beyond the horizon of my cubicle, that is) asking me when my appointment was. I stopped what I was doing, got on the phone and made an appointment for the next week.

On Thursday I went to the dermatologist and had a mole sliced off. On Friday I went to my annual GYN visit. On Sunday, I had my birthday. On Monday, I got a call from the doctor’s office. Not just from the doctor’s office, from the doctor. If you have never gotten a call from the doctor and only from the doctor’s office, you should know there is a significant difference in the information that is relayed. She asked me if I could come into the office today. Nope, I said. Just tell me now. I know what you are going to say. She said it is melanoma and it is aggressive and it needs additional treatment as soon as possible. Did I want to call the oncology surgeon myself or could the office do that for me in hopes that I could get in as soon as possible? Please, by all means call. The sooner the better. I called my husband to tell him what was going on and while I was on the phone with him the doctor’s office called back with a surgical appointment. If you have ever had much dealing with a doctor’s office, you know that expediency is not their particular strong suit. The urgency was frightening.

Chris said head home. I will meet you there.

Words, people. Words are powerful. I am not talking about the sticks and stones school rhyme sort of thing. I am talking about living, breathing things that don’t die and don’t go away and get stuck in the creepy corners of the back of your mind and feed off anything that comes in their path. Words are not nothing. This is a skin cancer, cancer yes, but they slice the thing off, you get a little more vigilant with sunscreen and you move on. Right? Right. Except not always. Enter the words. Words spoken to me years ago, flippantly, with no expectation to do anything other than ease my mind and her discomfort. I hear over and over in my head—People don’t die of cervical cancer anymore, it is hardly worth worrying about. Enter skin cancer—people don’t die of moles. It is hardly worth worrying about. Right? Except my mother was dead in less than two years time. I don’t want to die.

And so begins my struggle. My battle. For my mind and my body—my life. I will fill in more details with all of the interim fun and exciting experiences—it gets really snarky with certified letters from fired doctors and super nice people who just keeping cropping up in our path, but here is the current state of affairs:

(In the form of a list, cause some things will never change)
1. I have a moderately aggressive form of melanoma that I have had removed.
2. I have had the initial lymph node biopsy and it has come back positive for melanoma
3. I have a suspicious 1.2 centimeter nodule in my lung that due to my positive lymph nodes has become more than mildly suspicious
4. The location of my mole excision (just above my Achilles tendon) has required a plastic surgery intervention and on follow up is only “moderately pleasing” due to some necrotic tissue.
5. I am, even this very moment, being scheduled for a full body PET scan and MRI of my brain. I will not be making jokes about proof that it is really there
6. It appears that I will be having a lung wedge resection and a radical lymph node resection in the next several weeks when I have had a little more recovery time from the initial surgery
7. Chemotherapy is in my future. Standard of care (more on that later) is a year of Interferon therapy.
8. There are some clinical trials going on that I am eligible for that may somewhat alter the above course or not. It is too early to tell.
9. Beach week is 52 days away, come hell or high water.

Them’s the breaks folks.