Cancer Diary: How to Spot Skin Cancer
I noticed a new brown spot on my face near my eye. It looked like an aging thing since, well, I am aging and into the years that are considered "getting on in years." Nothing -- and everything -- seemed unusual about it. It just did not seem right or feel right -- and it itched a bit. I don't know if that is because it annoyed me prompting me to scratch it perhaps too often. So, I checked with the dermatologist. "Nothing to worry about," she said but decided to take a biopsy, anyway. She did a slice and a puncture. Now, doctors do not like to work on me the first time (once they know me, no problem) because I am allergic to local painkiller so everything has to be done the grin-and-bear-it way. "Well," the doc said upon learning that, "This will be uncomfortable." She was right, but I held very still and remained very quiet -- did not want her to slip near my eye because of some noise I might make.
The doc sent the tissue off to a lab and again said, "Don't worry; it does not look like anything serious."
A few days later, one of the staff called me. "You need to come in; the cells we tested were adenocarcinoma."
Sometimes, a person just senses....and sometimes they should and don't. For that reason, I found this article to be very helpful: How to spot the signs of skin cancer.
That "spot" of cancer has been removed, but now I have to go back every three months for a complete skin check. It is good to be in careful hands, but I might not have been if I had not gone in the first time.
For other Cancer Diary posts, click HERE.
Blog editor's note: As a memorial to Carl, and simply because it is truly needed, MSI Press is now hosting a web page, Carl's Cancer Compendium, as a one-stop starting point for all things cancer, to make it easier for those with cancer to find answers to questions that can otherwise take hours to track down on the Internet and/or from professionals. The CCC is expanded and updated weekly. As part of this effort, each week, on Monday, this blog will carry an informative, cancer-related story -- and be open to guest posts: Cancer Diary.
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