My Arm

I wasn't going to post about this but figured I would document my family history in medical so it might help someone.  At the funeral yesterday, one of the sons said that everyone is born with "biological ticking time bombs" and it's our responsibility to know what those are so we can disarm them when the time comes.  I agree with that assessment. 

One time bomb in my family is skin cancer.  Oman's do not tan.  It's just a fact of life.  We are pasty white, always have been and always will be.  It took me a long time to be fine with that but I have come to grips with the fact that I will never been tan.  Okay.

But, I have to watch when I do get in the sun to always wear sunscreen and then to be aware of moles that don't look quite right.

When I was pregnant with Courtney, I noticed a freckle on my leg that hadn't been there before and kept getting bigger.  I asked my OBGYN and she said it was nothing but thought I should have a dermatologist check it out.  I made an appointment with my dad's doctor so he would know our family history of skin cancer/melanoma.  He is a character (to put it mildly).  He took one look at the freckle, said, "That doesn't look good," numbed me and used a razor blade to take it off.  Ugh!  All like that, without any preamble or explanation. 

It turned out to be an "dysplastic nevus" with a "senescent change" that was "aggressive."  This means that I had an ugly mole that was quickly changing from being just a regular mole to a melanoma mole.  Since I have a family history of this, it meant that a week later I had to go back in to Dr. Duke and have a huge section (actually it was only the diameter of a quarter and only 1/2 inch deep) cut out of my leg and then sewn back up.  But he got all the changing cells.  I was then told that I had to go in every year to have a full-body check for other "ugly moles."

Now, everyone has "dysplastic nevus."  Dysplastic nevus are what turn into melanoma.  But not all dysplastic nevus will turn into melanoma.  Many people have "ugly moles" and never have melanoma.  The difference is in your genes.

So for the past 6 years I have watched my moles, had my body checks and been fine.  Last month I went in because I had a couple moles that bugged me.  Once again, Dr. Duke looked at them, grabbed his razor blade and I left the office with 2 "owies."  A week later I got the call that I had another "dysplastic nevus" that had a "senescent change" but it was only "moderate."  They still felt that they needed to cut it out of my arm.

This time, because this is my second dysplatic nevus, I am now considered to have FAMMM (familial atypical multiple mole-melanoma syndrome).  Just a fancy way of saying that I have to keep watching my moles.

So last week, once again I was in the office where he cut out a chunk of my arm.  It was about 3 1/2 cm long, 1/2 inch wide and 1/2 inch deep.  He took pictures of it wide open then with stitches so I could show my kids (not something I really wanted to do but I did tell you that he is a character).  It took 15 stitches to put back together (12 inside and 3 outside).  The weird thing is that it really hasn't hurt at all.  What hurt was the horrible wrap they put around my arm that itched!

I have another week until they can take the stitches out and I haven't heard if they are sure they got all the "changing cells" or not, but with that huge of an area, I'm pretty sure they did.

IF YOU ARE SQUEAMISH, DO NOT LOOK AT THE PHOTOS BELOW!!!!  YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.



This is when it's opened up:

 This is after he stitched it closed.  You can see the nurse's fingertip on the left side.  That helps with the scale.