I don’t have too much to say, but it just seems like just sharing my story could be helpful to myself and others. I’m a 33 year bachelor. I have never had any major medical problems, or even bad acne.
I had a bump on my scalp for a few years. My local family doctor said it was a cyst and removed it, saying that cysts often recur. They never sent it for testing despite saying they would. I went to a different clinic about a year later thinking it was the cyst recurring again, and they said I had a lipoma. Again, it wasn’t sent for testing.
About 8 months later I see a Dermatologist who cared and I had a 15mm Clark5 melanoma, and no idea how long it had been there.
My MRI and PET scans were both clear, and I’ve not had any other physical signs.
I just had the WLE and local lymph nodes removed 2 weeks ago and the first, right occipital node had a small micromet. None of the other nodes had any. After surgery, my neck was very painful and my donor site was too, but the wle site wasn’t too bad. I could only sleep on my left side. As of now, I feel very little pain and the graft is recovering well.
My first meeting with the medical Oncologist is late this week and I’ll see what trials I can get into then.
I have no idea what my prognosis is yet, but I know that the odds statistically aren’t good.
It’s been an incredibly stressful month and the first two weeks I was consistently depressed. Eventually you have to let go of that and take the treatment one step at a time. That was very hard for me to do because I’ve always liked to feel in control of my life. But I can’t contol it all, so I intend to make what I can control the best it can be. My attitude and my relationships. Cancer may end up stealing part of my life; I’m not going to give up the rest of it by constant worry.
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