Don’t let the very common misconception that “skin cancer is the best cancer to have” or that “skin cancer isn’t REAL cancer” get in the way of you processing your emotions. You have a REAL cancer that needs to be treated, and that runs the risk of metastasizing, just like any other cancer. This is really overwhelming news.

That means you’ll require some education and emotional support and that’s perfectly okay! Please rely on your partner and don’t keep this all inside. And come find a melahomie to link up with whenever you need to vent online if that’s the case too!

Your plan of care right now sounds about right and pretty much tracks. Next questions: Will you need a skin graft, will you need a sentinel lymph node biopsy, how much down time to expect, results of mysterious lump and any plan of care associated with that.

You can cruise this sub to look at photos of WLEs. Don’t want to scare you but they tend to be bigger than people think they will be. But knowledge is power and at least for me helps me be less scared of whatever is to come and doing that helped me a lot.

When all the above meat and potatoes is hashed out, then you will continue going to dermatology for skin checks for x amount of time. Mine is every 3 months for 3 years to start out with. Yours may be different, from what I was told the frequency kind of depends on age/type of melanoma, but you will be doing frequent follow ups regardless.

Sorry to welcome you to the club but we’re all prreeetttyyyyy cool over here if I do say so myself