The hole in my neck is about to get bigger....

So I've had a wierd looking mole for the past year on my neck. It was brown, but two-colors of brown and non-symetrical. My family doc told me last year that I should have a dermatologist take it out since it is on my neck. Well, we all know how long it takes to get into a dermatologist. We moved, were busy and finally got one scheduled for Sept. He didn't have time to do anything then, so I had to go back in Oct. Finally had it cut out and had an incision on my neck that was about an inch long. He says, my office will call you with the results in a week, blah, blah, blah. Have a good day.

A few days later I get home and there's a message from the doctor asking me to call his cell phone. Hmm, that's kind of wierd. So I call him and he asks me to come in the next day to discuss the results of my biopsy. OK, so as nurse, I know there's only 1 reason a doctor wont give results over the phone (especially since Tad got his "normal" results over the phone the previous week) and thats because its bad news.

So the next day I went in and found out that I have melanoma on my neck. It's not as thin as he would like it to be. It's borderline thickness stage 1B. So I would had to go in for more testing.

I had another exam on all my moles and nothing else looked suspicious to him, but now I'll have to go in every 3 to 4 months for the next few years.

I had a consultation with an oncologist yesterday. NEVER thought that I would have to see an oncologist. He did an exam and found one mole that he wants to remove. He also informed me that the inch long incision on my neck is soon going to get much bigger... about 1cm on each side and may require a skin flap. At the time he does that, he will also take out the nearest lymph node (sentinal node) and test it for melanoma. He is optimistic that that will be as far as we will have to go, as I only have a 10-15% chance that it has spread past the initial site based on its thickness at the time. But we will have to wait until December to have that surgery, so until then I won't know much.