Melanoma, Stand in Line you Bastard
Thursday, March 25th, 2010
Just after Christmas the back of my right thigh was itchy and it occurred that I’d been ignoring this itchiness for the second half of 2009. Every so often it would feel like a wasp biting on the back of my leg and every so often hard itchy lumps would turn up on the back of both thighs.
One night as I prepared for bed I happened to look at the mole on the back of my thigh. It was jet black with a very slight uneven edge on one side and it raised off the skin in a big bulb around the size of a decent redback spider. One look at the bastard and I was into the doctor to have it removed by 10am the next morning. The pathology tests came back and revealed that I had a malignant melanoma with a depth of .6mm.
The interesting thing about melanoma depth is that less than 1mm and you’re as safe as houses. Or at least, this time you’re as safe as houses because they come back to try to kill you somewhere else on your body – behind an eye, on the sole of your foot or somewhere equally as deceptive. If it had been over 1mm in depth then we’d be talking mortality rates at 5 and 10 years getting more dramatic until the 3mm and 4mm mark where the prognosis is almost futile.
A melanoma under 1mm in depth is called a thin melanoma. The thin melanoma doesn’t do the killing, its the precursor to the next one and the next one until you take your eye off the ball and a thick melanoma (over 1mm) takes hold. That thick melanoma spreads to your lymphatic system and from there it aggressively invades organs until you’re pretty much stuffed. At the very best you’re in for an aggressive pitched battle with a fiend out to suck your merry old soul to the big black kurmudgeon called death.
Yesterday my operation under local at the Royal Hobart Hospital was a 2.5cm reincission either side of the melanoma site (making a 5cm wide slice and dice pulled together into about 10 stitches). I’d put out of my mind exactly how close .6mm is to 1mm in depth so it was sobering to hear the record for the operation go down as “reincission malignant melanoma right thigh”.
I find it difficult to rationalise in a hospital operating theatre surrounded by the entire theatre staff that I am a cancer patient. It’s not the view I have of myself.
But this time I was lucky. Which is probably another proof of the universal principal of unfairness in itself – I live to fight another day. Until that day I’ll be having full body checks at least every 3 months for the next two years with 6 months checks up until the 5 year mark.
