The one where the doctor said 'mortality rate'

“Once it reaches a millimeter in size the mortality rate increases significantly, yours is at .2 mm.” 

Those were the words I heard from the Dermatologist within the first 2 minutes of him walking in the door. I’m sorry, what? Mortality? Why are you even throwing that word around? It’s 9 am on a fucking Wednesday morning and I’m here for what I thought was a pretty routine melanoma spot removed from my leg. My head was spinning, I barely remember the rest of the conversation, something about showing me how to check my lymph nodes to monitor the cancer spreading, something about oncologist and genetic testing, I was mostly blacked out…mentally. He numbed my leg and then removed the spot, and then I had to wait for a plastic surgeon to stitch it. What?? To say I didn’t understand the gravity of this appointment is an understatement. My head is spiraling. My palms are sweating, the backs of my eyes are stinging with the threat of tears. Meanwhile, I’m wearing this stupid COVID face mask and I can barely breath. It’s hard to walk to the next room for the plastic surgeon because half of my leg feels like I had an epidural in it…how am I supposed to drive home?

The plastic surgeon gives me rapid fire instructions (with his mask on, so I can feel no warmth or body language, I feel like I’m suffocating) on when to change the bandage, how to clean it, and the recommendation or minimal movement for FIVE WEEKS because the wound is so deep that the stitches could tear through my skin before it’s healed if there is too much pressure. I get in my car and I fall apart. My leg has a wound the size of a shark bite, over 4 inches long and over an inch of flesh removed, cut all the way through my muscle.

I get home and I don’t even know how to explain to my husband and mom what just transpired in this visit. I’m in disbelief, I have probably over a hundred moles on my body and they are recommending that they are all removed? How do I explain that I’ve been told I’m a ticking time bomb for this cancer to spread because I have had two melanomas in 3 months, this one with a measurable depth? How do I deal with the fear that my family becomes one of those tragic go fund me pages where my husband struggles to make it as a single dad of our beautiful daughter? Are fertility drugs the cause of this? Will I not be able to have more kids? How quickly can this spread? How long was it there? How fast can all the moles be removed? What if there are more? How can I control this? Why was the technician so laissez faire when they called with the results, why did no one explain to me the severity or what to expect? Why don’t they teach you about this in school? Did sun burns do this to me? Is it genetic? Was it that one time I laid out for too long at the Jamaican nude beach? How do you spring that kind of a statement to someone sitting naked on a table without any context of, “hey, what we’re about to do today is pretty serious, do you understand the process and next steps? Let me walk you through a few things seeing as you’re only 34 year’s old and probably don’t think about skin cancer on a regular basis.” When the nurse left she said, “you didn’t have any questions on the phone” – well yeah because I didn’t understand enough to have any questions, you said it was superficial and just needed to be removed. I intentionally don’t google these things, because google is a bitch and will present you with a site that supports any argument you’re looking to validate – good or bad, ridiculous or ludicrous.

I have so many questions. This happened a week ago and I’m mentally and emotionally spinning – most of it is a fight with myself because I KNOW that I need to take one day at a time and not panic over hypothetical what if things that may or may not ever happen, but about 67% of the day I start finding my thoughts teetering over a very dark edge.

I have wanted to write about this since that day, but everything has felt so raw that I was scared of the emotions that might come spilling out. I’m meditating every day, journaling every day, and I’m handling this the only way I know how to handle any problem…I made a project plan in excel. I listed out all the things I’d like to do with a status, notes, and due date column:

• 1.       Find an eye doctor, apparently, I need to monitor for growths on my eyes now. Who knew?
• 2.       Call the oncologist
• 3.       Research water filtration systems, the physician assistant that I saw the next day at my check up suspected I have poor cell repair, and maybe everyday things like BPA in water bottles could impact me
• 4.       Research PET scans – I guess that is something that can screen for cancer?
• 5.       Research genetic testing
• 6.       Find a nutritionist, the PA recommended to try to live ‘as healthy as possible.’ Super vague, so I guess I start with a nutritionist?
• 7.       Take pictures of my body, PA recommends starting to document my skin to monitor for changes. Very sexy pics to have on my phone…
• 8.       Find the best sunscreen, I’ll pay a fortune, I don’t care
• 9.       Make appointment to talk to fertility doctor, do we delay the IVF Cycle? 

I’m making progress on the tasks, it helps me feel a little in control, but mostly I’m fighting with overwhelm. Today during my conference calls I felt tongue tied and insecure. I need to crush this, find something good out of it, kill it, control it. Whatever, I cannot let this destroy me mentally or physically. It will not be easy, but there is no fucking way I will let my beautiful daughter grow up with a mom.