Since I'm starting this blog all about my experience with melanoma, I should explain my situation. I'm going to try to be brief (I get rather winded when I tell all about it).
This last August (2013) I was in my classroom hanging up colorful, "WELCOME BACK TO SCHOOL!" posters. The school secretary buzzed into my room and asked if I could take a phone call. It was my GP who had removed a mole from my lower left calf two weeks prior - a mole, he said, that didn't seem suspicious since it was asymmetrical, had fine borders, and was one color. (NEVERMIND that it had TRIPLED in size since I found it during my first trimester of pregnancy 18 months before....) The nurse had called me a week earlier to explain that they were sending my mole to Mayo, but I didn't really know what that meant. On this specific day, my GP was calling to explain that the Mayo tests confirmed I had "superficial spreading melanoma." He explained that although melanoma is the worst of all skin cancers, superficial was the one I wanted.
Right.
Well, two days later I was in the surgeon's office. My surgeon told me they would remove a section of my calf to be sure the melanoma had not spread. In the meantime, I had to set up appointments with an oncologist, an optometrist, and a dermatologist.
Little did I know, this was JUST THE BEGINNING of my time with all the "ists." I felt like I knew NOTHING about melanoma, and I was right.
