The offending Mole from my back had been removed on the 7th May.
I hadn’t heard a thing from my GP surgery so assumed all was well as had been with all my previous moles – just to be sure I called at the end of May & was advised that they hadn’t received any results yet and would contact me if anything was amiss.
Naturally I relaxed & forgot all about it….
On Friday 7th June I came home from work and opened the post. There was a letter from Gloucester Royal Hospital asking me to attend an Urgent appointment on Tuesday 11th June to “rule out cancer”. On the Saturday I received another letter from the hospital reminding me about the appointment & a letter from my GP surgery asking me to contact them Monday morning. I spent the weekend in a blur – worrying & simultaneously trying to reassure myself that it would be nothing.
I called on the Monday & was transferred to the GP that removed the Mole almost immediately – he said that the initial reports had come back saying that the Mole was a melanoma & that he expected what they would do would be to take a larger incision around the mole & send it off for testing.
Tuesday 11th June – I went to the hospital with The Mr – I still didn’t think it would be serious – I had heard of people that had moles removed that were cancer – and they just cut a bit more skin away & it is fine – I would be like them. I went in & sat down with a lady called Daisy who is a Macmillan Clinical Dermatologist Nurse. She confirmed the diagnosis of Malignant Melanoma – she said they hadn’t got all the results yet because it had been shaved off but they did know the Breslow depth was 4.5mm which is quite deep & that she thought that not only would they be taking extra skin but they would probably want to get me to have a CT scan as well.
I was given a wadge of information & advised she would call me to book the appointment for the additional surgery – I went home with The Mr, dropped him off & was about to drive off to work when Daisy called again – could I come back in that afternoon at 2.30 – the consultant was available & wanted to do the wide incision straight away.
Back in we went – The Mr demanded to come with & cancelled his work for the afternoon…me still thinking all would be fine & I would be able to go back into work the next day!
OK – imagine a 5p coin – that was the size of the scar on my back left my the shaved mole – because the depth of the Cancer was 4.5mm they would need to take a margin of over 2cm – so now draw a leaf shape where the widest point is 2.5 cm either side of the coin shape.
This is cut out – going into the back tissue about 1.5cm so the resulting sample looked a bit like a rump steak.
During the Minor operation itself I was shaking, trembling all over with – I also have a terrible tendancy to adopt a very dodgy sense of humour as an anxiety mechanism – so I called it a rump steak, and asked to look at it – in my mind because it was cancer it would look black & ugly on the inside – it didn’t – it looked like flesh & fat – cue a series of dodgy jokes about how I would be grateful that they had helped me shift a couple of pounds of fat…and thanks for the side back boob lift & darn it why wasn’t my mole on my tummy I could have had a free tummy tuck!
They cut, then they seal off the blood vessels with a giant cross between a cattle prod & a welding tool – effectively zapping the blood vessels to stop the bleeding – like an electric current. After that I was stitched up – 5 internal stitches & 16 on the outside. I have a very neat scar on my back that is about 6inches long.
For those of you who like to see scars I have included a picture taken about a week after surgery.
It was that evening that I told my parents & family…it was that day that my attitude to skin cancer changed forever.