Well, by most cancer standards... pardon the language here....  I don't have shit to complain about.  And I really don't.  That's why I've decided to actually pick back up my melanoma blog in hopes that some find it useful... helpful...  or just a bit humourus.

Well six months ago, I had a life altering event.  I was diagnosed with Melanoma.  LUCKILY.... and I keep that in mind at all times... I am very lucky.  Luckily, it was only a Stage 1 Melanoma.  I think... espescially with how long I just looked at the blotch on my arm,  things could have gone much worse.  I had an excision, staph infection, and lots of anti-biotics, but everything came back clear with my excision pathology.  No more cancer there.  I still go in for a full screening every three months, but so far nothing has shown up.

So, for the big reveal.  My Six Month Anniversary Picture.  It's not much to look at... just some scaring.  But hey, I think I'm entitled to a little melodrama :D

Yah!

My wife just removed the last of the stitches on my arm.  FINALLY!  I don't have to wear a band-aid or wrap or anything.  It feels so nice to be able to actually get up, take a shower, and not have to worry abut which arm is getting all wet.

As I expected, I'm going to have a very nice little scar.  Only 3 inches long, but the Doc did a great job on stitching me back up and I think I'll just have a miniscule line instead of what could have occured if I let this go any longer.  Well, that's enough for now.

Keep an eye on your moles and a hand on your sunscreen!

One of the not so nice things that occurred with this is that I got a staph infection.  I'm mainly telling this to those of you who aren't lucky enough to have a wonderful nurse for a wife.  I firmly believe that if it wasn't for my wife, I'd likely have wound up in the hospital with IV Antibiotics instead of oral antibiotics.

Two days after the excision, my arm was very warm, swollen and red from just above my elbow to almost down to my wrist.  The incision seemed to hurt more than I though it would and I could barely unbend my arm without pain.  So, I figured that I had just underestimated the pain that would be assosciated....  However, my wife drug my arm under some bright lights and started to place pressure on each side of the incision.  I won't give all the details, but there was something obviously not right about what was coming out of the incision.  So after she had a bit of freaking out (nurses immideately jump to WCS), called ahead and went back to the dermatologist the following day.  Needless to say, the doctor was also very concerned and immediately took a culture for analysis.

Since my wife works in a hospital and I go there fairly often, we started treating it like it was MRSA and I was prescribed some "big, honking" antibiotics.  In an odd way I was kind of flattered that I picked up something that they thought needed sulfa drugs.   After scheduling a checkup 4 days later,  my wife cleans the house from top to bottom, my daughter gets nightly baths with cetafil anti-baterial soap, and I swallow horse pills.

The good news is that the labs came back as just plain-old staph.  Dodged a bullet on that one fo sure.  But needless to say for anyone about to get the same procedure done, keep a sharp eye on what is going on with the incision.  I, once again, got very lucky and this could have turned out much worse.  Instead, I just have a cool little story to tell.

Now you're caught up to current day, and my incision is free of stitches and I will have a pretty good scar.  There's still a bit of healing to be done at the site of the infection, but I don't need to wear even a band-aid right now.

So to pick up with where I left off, I was just diagnosed with Stage IIA (maybe IB) Melanoma. I had a brief moment of "Why me?", but pulled myself back together because... hey, I've got a family to take care of, and I'm not going to let a mole keep me down.

So, that's the bad news. The good news is that it was VERY early... almost as early as you can detect one. Also, it means that unless my lymph nodes were swollen (they weren't), there's no need to do a Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy! Buuuuut, you still have to have an excision to make sure you get all of the possible melanoma out. Doesn't sound too bad, right?

Well... Lets just give you a breakdown of the procedure. My biopsy was 8mm. Since I have Stage IB/IIA, I get a 1cm margin excised. Not to bad... except that's the RADIUS. So now, we're talking about an approximately 1 inch circle being removed from my arm.

Still not too bad right? Welll.... Now that I would have a 1 inch circle... you can't close that well with sutures. Now, you have to make a pointed ellipse that is 2cm at the widest and 6-7cm long. That's right folks. For a 7mm early melanoma, I had a 1inch by 3 inch ellipse excised from my arm. Just to give you a rough estimate... Look at your standard "band-aid". That's only slightly larger than what was removed from my arm. I am including pictures now of the closed incision... I'm not going to link thumbnails just in case you have qualms about seeing sutures and fresh incisions. The first one is just the raw image... the second, I've overlaid approximate areas that were removed.

Up Close and Personal Annotated Excision

There you go... all the nice details.  All told I had about two dozen or more stitches, internal and topical.  Then the healing begins.