(Again, I’m keeping this Friends-Only for now.)
The results of the biopsy were not good. I’ve been diagonosed officially with skin cancer. A malignant melanoma.
So, the next week is spent meeting with various doctors, running tests, all leading up to Monday the 22nd, when I’m scheduled for surgery.
They’re going to remove the melanoma, along with a fairly sizeable chunk of the tissue surrounding it, patch a skin graft from my other thigh, and also do a “sentinel node” test — they inject the site with radioactive material, and if any of that material shows up in the lymph nodes nearby, they remove those nodes as well.
There will be post-surgery therapies, possibly radiation, chemo or bioimmune — I’ll be talking to the oncologist on Tuesday.
That’s the bad news. The good news:
1) we have a plan of action,
2) this is a standard procedure,
3) the doctor’s examination showed no further areas of concern,
4) it’s on an extremity, rather than my head or trunk
5) I’m 37, which means that a lot of treatments are available to me that wouldn’t be do-able if I was 60 or older. I’m strong.
I hate to hit you all with something as cliched as “I’m gonna beat this thing”, but….well, damn it, I’m gonna beat this thing.