mroulston

I had to wait about two and a half weeks to get the results of my biopsy.

I was diagnosed with stage I melanoma earlier this year, and I dealt with an absolutely terrifying and overwhelming amount of anxiety leading up to my biopsy. The worst part of it was the waiting, which for me was more than four months. That's not a typo — more than four months of waiting just for the biopsy.

I went to a walk-in clinic in mid January with a mole that I was certain was melanoma. It met every one of the ABCDE's, it was absolutely an ugly duckling, it didn't look anything like any pictures of basal or squamous cell carcinomas that I found online, and it looked exactly like some of the pictures of melanoma that I found online. The walk-in clinic booked an appointment for me with a dermatologist for the middle of May, four months later. That four months was the longest and most excruciating four months of my life.

Even when I finally saw the dermatologist in May, he told me he didn't think the spot was anything to worry about, but he would remove it anyway just to be sure, and wanted to book an appointment for me two months later. I was horrified. I couldn't bare to wait two more moths. I ended up pleading with him and he managed to fit me in two weeks later to remove the mole, but even that two week wait was awful.

So anyway, I can definitely relate to you when you say that the anxiety of waiting for the biopsy is overwhelming. I found that the uncertainty was what made the waiting almost unbearable, and the only thing that will take away the uncertainty is having the biopsy done and getting the results back. Until that happens, it's almost impossible not to run through all kinds of possibilites in your head.

One thing I did start to do though is read about Buddism and meditation, and that helped a bit, and continues to help me out when I feel crippling anxiety coming on. Buddism teaches a lot about living in the moment, and not letting yourself become overwhelmed by what may, or may not, happen in the future. I'm sure there are other methods of studying that concept that aren't related to Buddism, but Buddism has helped me.

So whenever I start to freak about about what may or may not happen in the future, I try to recognize that my thinking is heading in a direction where no good can come, and I try to relax, take some deep breaths, and remind myself that my thoughts are the only thing that I really have true control over, and running through countless horrible scenarios that haven't even happened, and may never happen, is not at all healthy.

The staging of the cancer would dictate what the next step is. Regardless of the stage, you would have to have a wide local excision to remove wider margins around the lesion to be absolutely sure that they removed all of the cancerous cells (they may or may not have removed it all during the initial excision). For early stage melanoma, the wide local excision is usually the final step. If the lesion is thicker, or has high ulcertation or mitotic rates (factors that could make it more likely to spread), then the next step would be a lymph node biopsy to try to determine whether the cancer has spread.

Oh, believe me, I completely understand. Waiting for my biopsy results was the worst experience of my life. I spent just about every waking second worrying about it because I was certain it was melanoma, I was just waiting to find out how bad it was. It turned out to be stage 1 melanoma, so it wasn't as bad as I had been worrying about (for two and a half weeks I had convinced myself it would be stage 4).

Nothing I say to you will make you stop worrying, but I figured it wouldn't hurt if I at least pointed out that all the worrying and anxiety you're going through right now is perfectly normal. You'll get through it. Stay positive!

Since my melanoma diagnosis about five months ago, I've purchased and read eleven books on Buddhism. I just took a quick look at all of them and tried to remember which one was most helpful with regards to meditation (I read so many books so quickly that I forgot which ones were the best and most helpful), and I believe the best book that I read on that subject is "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" by Shunryu Suzuki.

Also, in case it's helpful, I will tell you about another book recommendation that my walk-in clinic doctor told me about. The doctor was the most compassionate doctor I've ever dealt with, and he spent quite a bit of time calming me down the day that I first learned of the cancer diagnosis. One of his strongest recommenations for me was that I read a book called "Mind Over Mood" by Dennis Greenberger and Christine Padesky. I bought the book based on the doctor's recommendation, and it was also very helpful in trying to get my anxiety under control.