I can't say about the chemo, but a colleague had melanoma and only needed surgery and she...barely had to take any time off. This was partly because she had treatment just before Christmas and just took a slightly longer Christmas holiday. I suspect some of those who didn't work as closely with her as I did probably didn't notice she was out at all, they most likely just thought she'd taken a few extra days to travel to spend Christmas with relatives or something.

I think early stage melanoma can just be treated by surgery, so you may not need chemotherapy or anything like that. Of course, I don't know the details, because this is all second-hand and I think it differs depending on the stage and so on.

I had chemo and there's no way on earth that I could have carried on working whilst going through it.  The side effects were awful pains in my legs, which I was given morphine for, and also an overwhelming exhaustion.  After one particular chemo session, I came home and slept for 19 hours!  I was actually one of the 'lucky' ones, because some of the people I spoke to had side effects a lot worse than mine.  Good luck, Violet, x

I had similar thoughts to this. I couldn't have worked after my 2 operations but I did think about whether I could work during my radiotherapy and chemotherapy (which I'm currently undergoing). My radiotherapy side effects have finally kicked in after 10 sessions and although I haven't had any really awful side effects from the chemotherapy yet, I do feel really rough for a couple of days after it. Plus it apparently gets worse the more you have. I couldn't work at the moment because of how the radiotherapy is affecting me but I have spoken to other patients who have continued to work. I suppose you would have to see what treatment you were given and how it affected you.

Good luck xxx

Hi,

All I can say is play it by ear as different chemos have different side effects and we all react slightly differently to them.

In my case for the first two rounds I wasn't too bad, my sessions were on Thursdays, I took the Friday off and was back in work on Monday. Later on the side effects accumulated big time and I had to take some time off work. Like I said, different chemos have different side effects, the stuff I was on was pretty heavy duty. 

Good luck with your investigations.

Dave

If you have surgery you will need time off for the wound to heal as stretching and turning while driving may open the wound a delay healing, we used to advise patients to avoid heavy duties until healed. 
susie