I know what you are thinking and no, I’m not talking about the word you would use to describe your rival football team, people who would rob your nan or most politicians. And no, I’m not talking about COVID-19 either. 1 in 2 are said be diagnosed with it in one form or another and the range is vast. They span from a little spot that a quick operation can remove within half an hour to being terminal, incurable and spread across the entire body. It can be in your skin, your blood, your bones and everything else around it.
The problem with moles is that you near enough see them every day. I have a few and they have been with me for as long as I can remember. As such, if they were to change it would be so gradual it would be difficult to measure. I had one on my leg that was larger than others and had been pointed out by several people from my past as something that would be worth being looked at. In January this year I did just that. It was examined, measured and deemed fine. Five months later and a passing comment by my mother on its size, resulted in me participating in an online consultation that was available on my GP Surgery’s website. I answered the questions and uploaded some photos for a GP to review at their earliest convenience and the next day I received a call to say they didn’t like the look of it and were going to book me in to have it removed. A phone call from the surgeon a few days later and we had a date.
The details of what they were going to do to me were explained on the phone but we ran through it again while I was sat in the operating room just to make sure I knew what I was in for. An hour after stepping out of the car in the car park and I was stepping back in it again to go home. Under local anaesthetic my 8mm mole had turned into a 6cm line along my leg and 10 stitches. The mole they had removed and the area around it was sent to be tested to see if there was anything else going on. Two weeks later the stitches came out and the following Monday I got a letter in the post saying I had a post op meeting back at this hospital. Now, this had me slightly concerned. If it had been good news they would have just called wouldn’t they? Maybe it was just policy. Either way the mind went to town on overthinking all the potential outcomes of that conversation.
I suspect the delivery of this kind of news was well practiced as it was delivered well. At no point during the appointment did the consultant or the specialist nurse utter the word. And they didn’t need to. At 2.9mm deep it was classed as a stage 2 malignant melanoma. Stage 1 would have been too easy for me. Moving forward, the treatment would be going back in to remove more tissue around the area along with a lymph node biopsy to see if it has spread. I was handed a pack full of information and a link to take part in a Macmillan Holistic Needs Assessment. After a moment to read the material I was given, and to process the day so far, it was back to work. The following day I had some blood tests done so it was all moving very quickly.
As strange as it sounds, after the first 24 hours my emotion towards the news was one of feeling slightly underwhelmed. Because of its type and that it was caught relatively early, treatment was simple with all expectations that this would be the end of it. It was nothing like anything I had seen in hospital dramas like House or Scrubs. I was not going to be brimmed up to the eyeballs with chemo or irradiated and potentially gain superpowers, or webbed feet.
The next stage of my treatment was a CT scan. I have never had one of these before and unlike the noisy tunnel of the MRI machine that you lie in for 20 odd minutes, this was done with a doughnut like machine that they slide you though the centre of for a few minutes. If described correctly, the process could sound like something against the Geneva Convention. Upon arrival they waterboard you by forcing 3 large cups of water down you. They then get you to lie down with your hands above your head before finally injecting you with a radioactive substance which makes you feel very hot inside and that you have wet yourself. After all the water they made me drink it could have been a reality. I have to be honest, I’m not sure what they were looking for with these scans as they were still doing the lymph node biopsy but either way, I got the results back the following week and they didn’t find anything. I did ask if there was anything between the ears to prove the popular belief of friends and family wrong. To my relief there was. They asked for the evidence.
The second operation was in two stages in two different locations. Physically and geographically. Part one was being injected with something radioactive so they could find the lymph node and then part two was to be put under and let them get on with it. I turned up at 10.20am and didn’t go into the theatre until 3pm. I was a little hungry by the time I went through, and a little tired, not really having slept the night before. I probably didn’t need the anaesthetic to fall asleep. When they finished, I woke up to two packets of biscuits and a bacon and brie baguette. I might be exaggerating but it was the best baguette I had in my life.
It took 24 hours for the anaesthetic in my leg to wear off. Up until that time I was bowling about in a false sense of security, boasting about how little it hurt, arrogant in my ability to tackle stairs in a normal manner. This was until I tried to get out of a chair, having been sat down for hours working, and got stuck. The fall from grace was instant. Four weeks later and the glue had peeled off, the internal stitches were nearly gone, I was starting to walk normally with the thought of maybe even going for a jog and I had several preposterous stories in the bank if asked why there was a 10cm hole in my leg.
Today I had my post op appointment and everything came back clear from the tissue they took out around the original site on the leg and from the two lymph nodes they tested. This is not to say that it won’t come back or that there wasn’t anything in the third lymph node in the cluster, but for the moment there is nothing imminent to concern myself with. There is still a five-year journey ahead. I am to have a check-up appointment every three months for three years and then every six months for two years before I am given the proper all clear.
Moving forward, this experience has resulted in a travel-based project that I intend on pursuing. I would like to visit all countries along the Tropic of Cancer. Obviously, that would be difficult at the moment but I was hoping to do this before Simon Reeve got there. I knew he had done the Equator and the Tropic of Capricorn and was hoping this venture was still to be undertaken. Sadly, this was not the case. Simon traversed that line back in 2010. Never mind though eh, I haven’t been to most of the countries along it and it’s nice to have a goal to aim for. It might be a hard sell to production companies to film me giving it a go now that it has already been done.
I am strangely semi-pleased I had got it. Not just for new travel plans but with 1 in 2 likely to be diagnosed with it at some point in their lifetime, in one form or another, with one of them being me it means it is less likely that someone else I know will get it. While the statistics and warped logic is there, the science is not so please don’t take the risk. Wear sun cream.
