Make sure Melanoma
So I had a weird phone call from my dad the other day, usually we go for coffee every weekend for coffee just to get him out of the house, shoot the crap and drink the worlds worst coffee at Starbucks. Last week he phoned me up and he was very muted, he asked if I could come and have coffee with him and my mom. Of course my alarm bells went off and I started asking what was going on, but he didn't want to talk about it on the phone.
I went for coffee today with them and he told me that he had been diagnosed with Melanoma. He noticed a mole on his back changing color and taking on an irregular shape, so he went to get it checked out and the doctor cut out the first biopsy and scheduled a second surgery to go in and try to remove the rest of the tumor and schedule testing to make sure that it hasn't spread elsewhere.
Of course for my dad who is a very healthy 80 year old who takes excellent care of himself after being diagnosed with Diabetes a few years back this is a frightening thing. For my mother more so
The doctor feels pretty good about this because he feels like it was caught early. But we won't really know until he tries to cut out the rest of the tumor, and then gets it tested which takes about 2 miserable weeks.
so I've sat here all day and decided to post this up here because there is a lesson involved here.
If Melanoma is caught early its very treatable, if it manages to spread into the lymph nodes etc the prognosis very quickly drops down to a 25% survival chance or worse.
the bottom line for this post, is I'm not here looking for sympathy or anything like that. But keep track or your moles or "sun spots" or irregular coloration where it wasn't irregular before and if they change color or changes to a irregular shape or spreads do not pass go do not collect $200.00 get to your doctor and get it examined. Don't think for a minute that because its small or medium or whatever that you can wait.
Catch it early if you can.
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