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I went for my 3-month dermatology check today, with a new doc, since my regular doc was booked. I really liked her and she did a great job. There was one mole that she didn’t like, and it looked like it had changed a little from June (when we took pictures of my whole pregnant body to document my moles at that time). I don’t think she was terribly concerned about it, but she was concerned enough that she wanted to take it off. It was a large mole on my chest that others had been concerned about in the past, so it wasn’t totally surprising, but it still wasn’t anything I was really expecting.
We should get the results back sometime next week, but it may be up to 2 weeks. Hopefully it’s just an “atypical nevus,” like so many of my moles are 🙂 At this rate, though, soon I won’t have many more of the big moles left!
Just for fun, here’s a list of my recent surgical operations (anything where my skin was cut into or I had to heal from):
- Original shave biopsy of mole on right temple (melanoma) – April
- Wide local excision (WLE) of site – May
- Sentinel node biopsy (SNB) in right cheek (one node positive) – May
- Skin graft from shoulder to forehead – May
- Superficial parotidectomy – May
- Modified radical neck dissection (17 nodes removed, all negative) – May
- Drain from 6 & 7 (left a separate hole) – May
- Stitches from giving birth – July
- Neck biopsy (negative, likely neurofibroma) – September
- Atypical mole removal on forehead (on margins of original site) – October
- Mole #1 removal on leg (shave biopsy, totally fine) – September
- Mole #2 removal on leg (shave biopsy, totally fine) – September
- Biopsy of lump in abdomen (negative, dermatofibroma) – November
- Shave biopsy of mole on chest (pending) – December
Phew! No wonder all the docs ask if I even need the flyer on would/biopsy sit care anymore! Granted, many of these things happened at the same time (2-4, 5-7, 10-11), and some of them even shared an incision site.
Wow! So when I was originally making my list, I COMPLETELY forgot about #10, which necessitated actual surgery, in an OR, and had stitches that I had to go back and have removed. And I didn’t even remember it! Crazy! It does make me feel better, though, since that puts this biopsy at 14, not 13, which made the superstitious side of me just the tiniest bit nervous about the results.
I also have to give serious kudos to my body, which recovered from 1-7 while pregnant (AKA creating new life). It’s completely amazing what we humans can be capable of.
So, send all those great “negative” thoughts you guys are so good at, and hopefully this one will come back as just another boring old mole! I will break out the bacitracin and band-aids in the meantime and get to my “wound-caring.”
Jeff Parker said:
Holy smokes, Shannon! You've been through the ringer, and have come out looking awesome.