M-e-l-a-n-o-m-a

My walking passion

I am taking a little break this week from regular work and blogging. I wasn’t going to mention what I was up to and then I realized that it was directly related to what this blog was about.

On Monday I had a small melanoma removed from my face. When I had gone into the dermatologist to have it checked he took a biopsy. This was done on a “beauty spot” mole that I had had for many years. This past year it started to look a little bigger and a little funny. My husband told me many times to have it checked and then my dentist said, “have that checked!” So I finally did. Between the biopsy and the results I did some web surfing and read about basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma and, the scariest of them all, melanoma.

When the doctor called me in for the results and said, “melanoma,” I just kept thinking, “wrong word, wrong word.” But he also said, “It’s a 1a tumor, in the upper layers of the epidermis. We need to cut it out. Your five year survival rate is 95%” All good news.

So it’s been removed. As the plastic surgeon (because it was removed from my face) said, “this [surgery] will be a blip in your life, if we don’t get it, it would be lethal.”

Why share on a walking blog? Because being outdoors is my passion and always has been! I now live in Flagstaff, Arizona at an altitude of 7000 feet. I won’t stop loving the outdoors. I will continue to be diligent with the sunscreen. But now I won’t be embarrassed to check on funny looking moles and I hope you won’t be either. Have someone check your whole body too. The doctors said it was rare for women to have melanomas on the face, usually it’s on the back or back of legs.

Anyway, that's it, I will have an update on what's going on in Flagstaff later this week. We have had some snow and expect more later- at least the flowers like the moisture.