kimmyl

I'm so sorry to hear that happened to you! The very same thing (sort of) happened to me too earlier this year. I was diagnosed with umbilical melanoma in my first couple weeks of my second trimester. The doctor's did a wide incision on my belly button and removed that area and also took out a couple of lymph nodes on my right and left groin. To find which lymph nodes my belly button drained too, they injected a little bit of radioactive dye (not too strong because of the baby). I was so scared because I didn't want the baby to be hurt by the radiactive dye and the anesthesia, but the doctor's assured me that the radioactive dye wasn't strong enough to hurt the baby and that they anesthesia was the safest. So far they did take the cancer out of my belly and my lymph nodes came back as not infected. I'm now on my third trimester with so much more energy and the baby is still healthy. I will send you a private message if you have any questions or concerns! I know how it feels so if there's anything I can do to help, please let me know! 🙂

Hi! I'm glad you said something on this forum because the same thing happened to me, sort of, and I wasn't seeing a lot of people who had the same case. I felt the alone too because I don't think it's too common to find melanoma in your belly button, so you posting made me feel better! Kind of a long story but.. I originally had an infection in my belly button (I have an innie) back in Oct 2016. I managed to clean it out and it went away. But it came back at the end of November/beginning of December. I went to the doctor because there happened to be a tiny growth that he said looked like a blood clot growing outwards. This was about the time I found out I was pregnant too. The doctor advised to clean it and it should go away.

Fast foward to the beginning Jan 2017, at this point the growth grew 3x it's size and every time I had tried cleaning it, it would bleed and leak clear (sometimes yellow) liquid. So I had the doctor remove it and send into the labs. It came back as stage II malignant melanoma! It really came as a shock to me because there has never been any cases in my family with skin cancer. My family comes from Philippines and you'd think my tan skin would protect me enough. I live up in Alaska too and we don't get much sun..

Anyway, I went to the local surgeon in town and had a couple of other moles removed and then I was advised to go see Dr. David Byrd at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. We don't have many medical resources here in Alaska so the next best thing was going to Washington to have my belly button removed. Since they told me melanoma is a very agressive cancer, I had to leave the following week. Being pregnant doesn't help either because it could speed up the cancer due to the hormones in my body doubling each day and it might hurt the baby too if I wait any longer.

So I went to see Dr. Byrd and he helped me feel a lot better because he has been doing this sort of thing for a while now. We had the surgery to remove my belly button area and a couple of lymph nodes from the right and left side of my groin to make sure the cancer didn't spread. In the end, they managed to remove the cancer site and they found out the cancer didn't spread to my lymph nodes. Now that it's March 2017, I am cancer free and the pregnancy is going great so far. I was a little wary with being put to sleep because the anesthesia but Dr Byrd assured me that the anesthesia was safe and the only thing that would effect the baby is the weight and that the baby may be born early. I think that if it wasn't for this baby, I would have never known I had skin cancer because what the doctor in my hometown said is that the pregnancy made the cancer grow outward instead of inward.