Skin Cancer

When my family arrived in Canada from England when I was 10, we were excited by the warm sunny weather and went camping every weekend. Nobody bothered with protecting yourself from the sun in those days, so we all got sunburned every weekend and peeled all week. In retrospect, not a good decision for a family with fair skin.

As an adult, I was diagnosed with my first basal cell carcinoma at the age of 41. Actually I had four removed that year, some quite large as they had been undiagnosed. Subsequently I had one or two removed each year, and after a dozen or fifteen I lost track of how many had been removed. I haven't had any removed for several years now.

However, I have had a sore spot on my nose for several years that two dermatologists didn't see any reason to treat. As some skin cancers do, it would bleed a little, scab over, and eventually go away, only to reappear a little larger a few months later.

This past fall, I decided to try a new dermatologist, and since we are now using our U.S. medical insurance, we found a good dermatologist in Buffalo. Upon examining my nose, his comment was "I can't believe any dermatologist let this one get so big!" He said that it was too big to cut and stitch, as there isn't enough skin on the nose to do this. He would have to scrape and burn the tissue, and might have to go deep to get it all. I was upset, but he explained that I could put off the surgery, but it would only get bigger.

He injected an anaesthetic into the area and proceeded to operate. Barry held my hand throughout. The doctor promised to let me know the results of the biopsy and scheduled me for additional surgery for the removal of two other smaller ones on my body in a couple of weeks.

I didn't see how big it was until that night when I changed the dressing. It's about 1/2" across and a definite crater. The doctor hopes it will be fully healed in several months.



Curiously, when I applied for life insurance five years ago, I was initially denied because of my history of skin cancer, even though basal skin carcinoma is not a life threatening cancer as it does not metastasize throughout the body. I sometimes wonder if the actuaries knew of a connection between my skin cancers and my current diagnosis of Non Hodgkins Lymphoma!

Afternote: the biopsy came back as actinic keratosis, a pre-cancer. It's healing well although I still have to keep it covered all the time.

9 month checkup

It's been 9 months now since I finished 6 months of chemo, and 16 months since my diagnosis. At my checkup last week we heard that my fifth CT scan the week before was normal, and that although my hemoglobin and white blood cells are still low, that this is normal for this stage of my recovery. My Lymphocytes are still low, but my neutrophils are in the normal range, and this is an important indicator. Dr R. indicated that these levels are my new normal and that I should just keep living my life and not think about cancer.

I think that I am getting stronger every day now that the jet lag is over. I'm back to yoga and QiGong at Wellspring every week, and I can now do errands around town on my own. Although I still tire easily, I feel much more like normal. I actually sewed a pillow cover for my granddaughter this week.

Thank heavens I met so many people through Wellspring who told me it would take at least a year to fully recover from chemo, or I would have worried even more than I did.