It's not lovely, but it's still attached....
So last week, when I wrote about delaying a Mohs surgery?
Sigh. That won't be happening.
In case you're new here--When you are immunosuppressed, you have a 10x higher chance of getting skin cancer than the rest of the population. Last year, I had a few Mohs surgeries to remove some squamous cell carcinomas, one of which involved my scalp and plastic surgery to fix it (I forget the technical name at the moment--something about scalp rotation).
This year, when I went in for my skin check, my dermatologist biopsied a spot on my right hand.
The thing you need to know about my right hand is that my right hand is my burned hand.* It's the hand with the skin graft (as you can see in the above photo). Grafted skin is very sensitive skin. It hurts if I just bang it against something much more than my normal left hand. Something just moving across it with a little pressure can tear the skin. And it's my right hand, which is my dominant hand. So you can see--problems here. So I wasn't keen on having the skin cut up for something that didn't need to be done.
Well, turns out it does need to be done. Sigh. The cells aren't melanoma, but they will be eventually. They're really close, actually. So, out damn'd spot.
The spot is small, so it shouldn't be too bad. It shouldn't affect how my hand works, but I can't get it wet for four days post-op. (Mohs surgery really isn't surgery, proper. You're awake for it. No IVs are involved, no anesthesia other than the local that the skin gets. In this case, we're using a topical one that will numb the skin up well before we go in with the needle, because this skin is so sensitive to anything.)
So, as much as I didn't want to do this, I don't have a choice, and my logical Spock side won out. There will be some Valium involved, because I want to make sure I can keep my hand still and not overly freak out. I have a high pain tolerance, but there's just something about hands--and also, this hand hasn't had anything medical done to it since the skin graft 12+ years ago. So, it's out of practice!
I will also reaffirm all my sun protection things that I said last year: Don't tan! Do not "lay out"! Wear sunscreen! Wear hats! Get swimwear with sun protection (UPF) in it, like these! (I love the Pacifica series. I wear them all the time. With two of them, I can rotate wearing one and letting one dry when I go on vacation. And also, you don't have to worry about the top falling down or kids grabbing you and exposing something that the whole pool shouldn't be seeing! They are crazy comfortable!)
So, next week, more bad cells gone. Out, damn'd spot!
*The burn happened during transplant surgery; an IV infiltrated--basically it skewed out of the vein and into the skin. But the med that was going through the IV (calcium, I think) kept infusing--into my skin. Yeah. That's not good. So when I woke up in the CTICU, my right arm was heavily bandaged, and I was really confused because why was my arm bandaged??...but anyway, calcium burns. There was a question about whether or not I'd lose my hand and lower arm, but fortunately, that did not happen. It's not pretty, and I'll still get somewhat invasive questions about it from time to time, but I'm just glad my hand and arm are still attached!