Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Dear 16 Year Old Me

You will be diagnosed when you are 33 years old.
You knew. You had no excuse. You did it anyway.
You are lucky. Your doctor's will be watching you. You will have had 9 places removed in over a year. 8 and 9 will show up as melanoma. The second cut at these places, you will get a call - no margins clear. Your doctors will be pretty sure it is Stage 0 to Stage 1 melanoma. You will go under the knife.. and get stitched up. You will go on to have even more places cut but they will be margins clear over the next two years. One day, your doctor will give you permission to come back in 6 months. You will be free.... you were lucky. It could have been a lot worse.

Dear Grant and Miles - Don't even think about it! You will not be "tanning".

1 comment:

Reba said...

i haven't gotten quite to the melanoma diagnosis yet--just hearing "precancerous" is scary enough after a biopsy. next week will be (i think) #5 for me. the pieces they are removing are getting bigger.