My husband was diagnosed with melanoma (a spot on the trunk which was shown to have spread to a few lymph nodes) in 2017. He became an MSKCC patient and after an 18 month period of “watchful waiting” started Opdivo when there was spreading to a lung and a couple of spots in the torso. My husband did a year long course of Opdivo in 2019 which was effective, eliminating all spots. In the process his thyroid and adrenal glands were destroyed, but medication took care of those issues. All follow up scans since the beginning of 2020 showed everything to be normal with no signs of disease. In October 2023 it was decided to go to annual scans since he had been cancer free for so long. However, this May he started complaining of left leg pain and by August he was in the hospital betting to stop the cancer from spreading. In September his entire leg was amputated and on October 14th he passed away. The conclusion was that this recurrence of melanoma was “Darwinian” – the melanoma came back stronger, more aggressive, and lethal. He frankly never had a chance – we were never able to get to the point of starting any kind of treatment. My purpose in posting this story is to say stay vigilant- this is a tricky, sneaky, disease – and also ask if anyone else has heard of a similar case (one friend did know a friend of a friend with a similar story so I know it happens)
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