November
2006
Melly Update
I’ve been asked recently quite a lot how my quote “health situation” is going and thought it was worth a quick update. I know why people don’t like to say the C word, but really it’s ok, it’s fine you can say cancer, so say it!
Within the limitations and frustrations of our national health service, things are going well in fact the whole thing is not even an interesting story any longer. I wait three months go for a check up strip semi naked, they check for secondary tumors, have a little prod around in my groin, frown a bit, but not much, I proceed to ask about scans and get flatly refused. Then they tell me to come back in three months and that I should carry on as normal. I do feel now that melanoma is just an addition to my life, a new topic, a new motivation, it was scary for a time but I’m seeing it as an enhancement to my character, something to be proud of and not scared of.
The only update really is my GP now has to share the check up routines, which means I have to make a frustrating phone call “can I book an appointment to see you in three months”, to which I get a reply “well no, we can’t give you anything longer than 48 hours in advance”. Good old Blighty.
At 6mm I thought my time here was up
I can’t explain why my melanoma(s) haven’t returned given how deep my biggest primary tumor was, and to a certain extent because I’ve not had any further diagnostic tests like lymph biopsy I feel like I’ve been robbed of the chance of finding out if I have stage 3 cancer instead, which would mean we could do something about this cancer other than having a chat about it. But do I need to explain why I’m surviving a 6mm melanoma? Isn’t that a great story in its own right that I’m here to blog about it?
Major UK soap deals with melanoma skin cancer
Something of a mini revolution is happening. It’s not just skin cancer anymore, we are hearing about the “M word”. I would like to divert your attention to the British soap Corrie, which is running a melanoma storyline. It has been such a strange year because on a few occasions I said Corrie could run this storyline, but I hope we can now feel we can talk about this and start to get some action on getting people to check their skin not their SPF.
Girl who lives in the dark
However good or bad my melanoma is, mostly on the surface it’s good, I don’t have XP and for that I’m forever thankful, even if I had a red skinned childhood at least I could go outside. I saw a documentary on SkyThree titled “The girl who lives in the dark”, and it’s the most extreme form of XP I’ve seen, in fact it’s the only time I’ve seen what out of control melanoma looks like, if it is melanoma at all. The girl who lives in China had to have heavy surgery to remove huge tumors from her face and the Chinese doctors, led by a British doctor who had given up his annual leave to go over to China to save this girl, managed to prevent the tumors from returning to her skin. Her skin cells and what I assume to be melanoma cells will be stored in research labs in the UK and may yet prove to be the basis of a cure for this horrific (yet so misunderstood) disease, or at least an understanding of how this disease really works, because it remains a mystery.
The end? No way, it’s just the beginning and as for that book I’ll write about this, well you are reading it now! “Beating melanoma, a manifesto for positive change” has a ring to it, the world needs a book to really spell it out, that the messages on skin caner are too simplistic and often skip over issues relating to melanoma.
