Hellobee

After I wrote last week about my melanoma diagnosis, I was overwhelmed by all of the kind words and hopes and prayers that flooded in. Thank you so much – I truly cannot overstate how helpful they were as I was sitting and shivering in the surgery suite. In this world where we so often lament the lack of “villages”, I felt all of you standing behind me with positive thoughts and it was uplifting and so very, very helpful.

Several of you asked for an update and I’m here to report back with good news: surgery was extremely successful and they believe that they removed all of the cancer. A physical exam of my lymph nodes did not detect any abnormalities and so lymph node surgery is not considered a necessary next step. They have sent out the cancerous material for additional genetic testing to help us to understand how likely future occurrences are, and I’m also planning to research and speak to a genetic counselor to glean additional information (I was alerted to this by a Hellobee reader and I’m so thankful!). For now, the immediate next step is to heal and to attend all of my follow-up appointments and to keep a close eye on every inch of my skin for any changes.

The surgery experience was not what I expected. It’s interesting – as I wrote in my first post, I was initially very shocked and very scared by the diagnosis. I would estimate that I spent roughly three hours alternating between ugly crying, calling family and crying, texting family and crying, looking at pictures of my kids and crying, and staring deeply into space (and then crying).

However, by that same afternoon, I was fully clear-headed and back to work. The only exception was that I felt absolutely disgusted by the sun when I had to walk to my car at the end of the work day, and I also felt extreme anxiety looking at one of my daughter’s moles that evening at home. Still, I would say that by the very next day, I had developed this mindset of “It’s going to be just fine. I overreacted before. They are going to do a small cut and this will all be over with.”

That mindset is how I entered the surgery suite. And let me tell you, it took roughly 15 seconds for me to realize that this surgery was WAY more intense than that mindset. For starters, when you go in for melanoma surgery, they talk openly about your cancer. This was very jolting to me. It felt as though every other word out of the nurse or doctor’s mouth was “cancer”. “Cancer, cancer, cancer, cancer – if you need the bathroom, it’s down the hall to the left – cancer, cancer, cancer, cancer – put this gown on so that the opening is in the front – cancer, cancer, cancer, cancer.” And finally, “Do you have any questions about your cancer?”

Um.

Next they pulled out the photos and biopsy results of the melanoma and showed me my little gremlin. That was also a big mind trip because the picture of it was not at all how I recalled it in my head – I thought it was a dark freckle when they found it but it was actually more like an abnormally-shaped small mole. This gave me great peace of mind because the night that I got the diagnosis, I had become absolutely convinced that a dark freckle on my leg was also melanoma because it looked so similar in my head to the melanoma on my chest. I was so convinced of this fact that I had mentally prepared that they would cut that out of my leg on this same visit. Turns out that the freckle on my leg was… just a freckle on my leg. (I’m fairly confident on this because I asked the doctor three times if he was sure about that.)

Next, the doctor took a purple pen and drew a little circle around the melanoma site. I looked down and that little circle was just what I expected – it was maybe just a smidge larger than other skin biopsies I had done before for abnormal moles.

But then he kept going. He drew a circle around that circle. And this is where things really started getting heavy for me – he drew ANOTHER circle around the circle’s circle. When I looked at what he was planning to cut out, my head started to spin a little bit. Then my husband said something like, “well that’s pretty wide but certainly you’re not going to cut equally deep?” When the doctor answered that the cut will be as deep as wide, and then went into great detail on the multiple layers of stitches, I became fairly certain that I was going to vomit. I also came dangerously close to falling off the chair due to dizziness and sweatiness. And that folks – that is the moment that they brought in the valium.

Mr. Starfish captured this pic of me right after the marking, around the time that I was about to vomit. The purple ink on my chest is the area that the doctor will remove.

My surgery was called Mohs surgery. They make a cut of the area and then they immediately take the specimen to the lab, apply dyes to it, and look for melanoma markers. They leave the wound open during the time that they are analyzing it because if they see more melanoma in the specimen, they go in for round two of additional cuts. I was lucky in that they got it all in the first cut.

To make the cut, they apply a local numbing agent through multiple injections. I felt absolutely nothing as they took that inch of skin out of my chest. That part of the procedure took maybe 10 minutes. The doctor then left the room to begin looking at the specimen in the lab while the nurse applied temporary sutures to keep the gash somewhat contained. She then sent me off to the waiting room where, perhaps induced by the valium or perhaps induced by 300-million mentions of the word “cancer” in the past hour, I ate chili-cheese Fritos for the first time in probably a decade. And let me tell you all – those things were DELICIOUS.

Post-surgery snacky snack.

Roughly two and a half hours later, the nurse popped in the waiting area, locked eyes on me, and said the magic words, “He got it all! Get in here girl and let’s stitch you up!”

I got back in the chair and she removed the temporary gauze and coverings and sterilized the area once again. She did 5-6 additional injections of the numbing agent and left to get the doctor. Probably the worst decision that I made that day was taking a peek at my chest when she left. It was a massive bloody hole in the center of my chest. I briefly thought about how gross those chili-cheese Fritos would taste coming up the other direction…

The doctor soon came in and gave me additional detail about the test results. He was extremely optimistic, he put my cancer at Stage 1, and he stated that he was confident that they got it all out. I was so elated and relieved!

He next went about stitching me back up and that took much, much longer than the initial cut. There was a lot of tugging and pulling, a lot of snipping, and unfortunately the local numbing agent was wearing off a bit and so it was somewhat painful. My biggest surprises during this part were 1) how long it takes to stitch up a 1-inch diameter gash (45 minutes), and 2) how huge a scar is for a 1-inch diameter gash (this thing runs from my collarbone down to the top of my breast).

Resting up post-surgery with my bandage.

They bandaged me up with so much gauze and tape that the whole package lies a solid inch off my skin. I’ve been directed not to take it off for two days, after which in-home wound care begins. I will also go back in three weeks for a scar check, and after that begins my regular quarterly skin cancer screenings every three months. Odds are high that they will find more given that I had melanoma at a young-ish age (36). Diligence and extra caution will hopefully help me to avoid the most terrible of outcomes.

Someone said in the comments to my last post that this is a good reminder to us all to prioritize mom health and mom care. That really rings true to me. I think that like so many of you all, I often get overwhelmed by life, trying to be a good mom, a good wife, a good employee, a good friend, a good everything really. But this experience has given me some helpful focus and realization. To live a good life and to do all of the good things that we prioritize day in and day out, you first have to live. So go out and take care of yourself. Get your checks, be they physical or emotional or spiritual, and prioritize them. Excuse the corniness (which is almost certainly driven by how many times I’ve heard the word “cancer” in the past week), but your life may indeed depend on it…