aspen22

Early April of 2015 I noticed a mole on my back just inside my right shoulder blade. I have many moles but this one looked a little darker and larger. I wasn’t concerned, but being vigilant I made an appointment for the next week with my dermatologist. One week later I received the call…malignant melanoma.

I called a dermatologist friend at the Mayo Clinic. He looked over my pathology report and said that while melanoma isn’t good, I was in a good place. And statistically I was! My stats from my initial biopsy were Breslow .45mm, 0 mitosis, no ulceration, but Clark’s level IV. Still I was safely in the 1A stage (a 97% survival rate) and according to some research, Clark’s level is the least important value.

My local derm suggested we do the WLE (wide local excision) and if the margins came back questionable he would send me to an oncologist. When he said the word “oncologist” it hit me hard. I felt like I could live in denial about having cancer if I could safely have my derm take care of it in an office. For some reason, after he uttered the “O” word I felt I needed to find a melanoma specialist. I wanted to start at a place that could help me from start to finish. In hindsight, that was the best decision I have made!

I made an appointment 350 miles away at the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City. The derm surgeon there had their pathologist re-examine my biopsy and they agreed with my initial path report. But he gave me the option to do a SLB (sentinel lymphnode biopsy). The only red flag was the clark’s level, but being young, and a mother of four little ones, he wanted me to have the option. I only had a 4% chance that it had spread.

My husband and I decided to have the SLB at the time as the WLE to give us peace of mind. The surgery went well, and the recovery was going well too. I thought to myself how lucky I was to “cure” this cancer through surgery and not have to go through chemo. Less than a week later, we got the results. My skin around the WLE was clear, not a single cancer cell remained after my initial biopsy, BUT one of the five lymph nodes removed contained a single isolated cancer cell. We were completely caught off guard! How did I go from 1A to 3A?!? What happened to stage two? Not the promotion I was hoping for. Hearing that news was much harder for me than hearing my initial melanoma diagnosis. It was like a punch in the gut!

After much research, I decided interferon was not for me. I am currently taking part in a phase III clinical trial called the Polynoma 103A or Seviprotimut-L that I started in August of this year.

This has been a crazy ride, and one I have only just begun. The hardest part for me is never being free from the worry that this ugly beast can rear it’s ugly head again. It’s a fear only those of us going through this fight can understand. On the same token, the field of melanoma research is exploding! It’s an exciting time and a time of so much hope!

The biggest lesson I have learned is trust your instinct and trust your path. I have yet to find two melanoma warriors with the same story. Be your own advocate and focus on the positive. And for me I need to remind myself that stats are just numbers. There’s a quote I heard that says there are three types of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics. I am not a number. My story is my own.