Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Quarterly Skin Screening, 15 months....

Yesterday was my quarterly skin screening.  It is so hard to believe it has been 15 months since my melanoma diagnosis.  My anxiety went down over the course of the past week, thank goodness, so I was able to talk to the dermatologist about more this time.

Last summer, I had some "freckles" appear on my face that concerned me because they were more of a grey color than the freckles that cover the rest of my body.  I never mentioned them to my doctor because, I was sure that she saw them and wasn't concerned.  Well, this summer I have developed one single large grey freckle just above my left eyebrow, in the forehead crease that apparently decided to show up with my 35th birthday last month.  Well, the single one bothered me enough to ask, and she went right to it without me pointing it out.  Luckily it is nothing to be concerned about, just an age spot.. Lovely.  She said if it bothered me we could explore bleaching creams, but I said no, that with make up it looks like a normal freckle.  Age spots and mistaken for a teenager at my sons high school just a few weeks ago..  Now that makes me giggle.

Anyway, so she reminded me how good my moles always look and said that they all looked good.  I told her about the evolution of the one on the bottom of my foot.  She said if it is getting lighter that is good, that it is darker or pearl white (I think) changes that we need to worry about.  So we will keep watching that one.

She checked out the spot between my toes again closely.  It was biopsied in 2007, but the color has completely returned, minus a white streak of scar tissue going through the middle.  It was a twin with the one on my arm that turned out to be melanoma.  They developed about the same time and looked about the same too, which is why I called them twins.

She did decide to biopsy one on my upper thigh.  I had called once and went in for a spot check on that one, it was small, but seemed to be getting bigger.  It was from another set of twins, so I was able to show her the one on my abdomen in comparison because they both used to look the same in size and coloration.  They had one side that was darker than the other originally. The one on my abdomen still looks the same, but this one on my thigh had gotten a little bigger and dark all the way across. She said she wasn't too concerned, but that darker was definitely something she didn't like to see.

In the past the results have been within 1-2 days, but she did tell me, that it could be 7-14 days.  I will update when I hear.


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