My mum is over visiting for a few days…my parents live in France along with my younger brother & his partner who is due to give birth any day now. (which I am very excited about!)
My parents experience the highs & lows of my Rollercoaster journey just slightly ahead of you…in that, major or significant information is shared via skype calls first. It isn’t always easy for them being so far away to appreciate & understand my emotions or methods of processing this Melanoma madness. So I took advantage of having Mum over visiting to drag her up to Oxford with me on Thursday.
I was due to meet with Dr Oliver Cassell (aka The Surgeon) and the appointment was just to look at the 2 scars on my back from a couple of weeks ago when they removed a couple of moles. I thought it would be a good appointment to take my mum to….we laughed on the way there that I would go in….show them my back & they would say “ok that all looks great” and within 10 – 15 minutes we would be walking back out again….a 3 hour round trip for the all clear.
Don’t get me wrong…I don’t mind the travelling – I have chosen to have my treatment within the Oxfordshire hospitals because I truly believe that I am getting a much more comprehensive level of care there. I trust the team looking after me & that is why I put up with the driving and time in order to get to be looked after by them.
All the same…my coping mechanism is humour….and it isn’t the first time I have gone all the way to Oxford a bag of apprehensive nerves and walked out 10 minutes later bright & breezy!
The lovely nurse Sue Fletcher saw me first. To remove the surgical tape applied by Sally Jay a few weeks before & if necessary to re-dress the wound. No need to re-dress – the scars are healing extremely well.
Dr Cassell then came in with a student….first he quickly looked at the back scar…happy with the work done by his colleague he sat down to catch up on “me”. No system mixing paper and computers can ever keep up with my medical melodrama.
So I updated him on the Colonoscopy last week…the size of the lesions…the fainting….my reaction /post polypectomy syndrome…the ongoing saga that is me!
Up to date & somewhat in shock he advised his student that now they would routinely check my moles on my upper body & check all of my lymph nodes. Since January’s check-up when they felt my neck in great detail I have had neck paranoia. I don’t really know what a swollen Lymph node feels like / what is a gland etc….I constantly feel my neck and am certain there is something there!
So Lymph nodes first & this is where having the student in the room was brilliant. Whilst Dr Cassell was explaining to the student the process of feeling for Lymph Node changes I was getting an expert tutorial. How he goes about the examination…what he is feeling for…how slowly to check so you can be certain of what you are touching. My paranoia is apparently “big blood vessels that can be felt because the patient has a skinny neck”! That’s it….I love this man….he has called me skinny twice in less than a year!
Then Dr Cassell looks at other moles on my torso….I have hundreds of moles so understandably this isn’t a 2 minute glance. He is behind me with the student & Sue Fletcher…he presses the Dermatascope against several moles……he goes silent……for what feels like a lifetime…..He signs loudly and says “oh dear oh dear”….my mind is racing imagining & expecting 1 of 2 things….either he is going to chuckle and say “only joking” or he is going to say “no it is not a mole just a huge spot!”
I can’t see the offending subjects – but frankly I hate all of my moles….so I say “if it was up to me they would all be taken off”. Dr Cassell replies with “I am somewhat coming around to your way of thinking!”
There is a mole on my back…on the left almost at waist level, that is different to how it looked just 3 months ago when he last saw it….and under the glass he can see blood vessels within the mole. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – but The Surgeon wants it gone…..there is another mole…one right in the middle of my back as well…this one is almost certainly nothing but it is the last remaining dark brown mole on my back & because all of the others have been taken off he would feel more comfortable if this one went as well.
From my position I have a 9 inch scar on my back…a few more tiny scars is not an issue…peace of mind is far preferable.
The plan is set….2 moles to come off in a couple of weeks & even better I don’t need to come back to Oxford just to get results that say all is well with them…unless they are not…which I am assured they won’t be.
My mother liked Churchill hospital….she particularly liked the welcoming warm feeling you get there….from the gentleman playing on the Grand Piano in the foyer to the smiling familiar face of a nurse that knows you and cares about your wellbeing. My mum likes that I am being looked after…well.