Hi Elizabethm,

The text in your first sentence has become a little muddled - are you saying that your first excision, for biopsy, was 6 weeks ago & that you think the delay between the first excision & the wide local excision is worrying you? If I'm correct can I firstly try to allay your fears a little by saying that a 1a melanoma is very thin in depth & the chance of any cancer cells breaking off is very small. The average wait for a WLE is usually 5 weeks (2/3 weeks to get the biopsy results followed by a 2 week wait for scheduled surgery) so you aren't too far off the average wait. 

A melanoma doesn't regrow once removed and any small cells that could possibly be in the surrounding tissue occur while the melanoma is still in situ so the WLE is a belt & braces surgery to mop up any cells that have already broken away. They don't do the WLE surgery at the first surgery because some patients moles will be benign & they don't want to cause a large surgical wound if it's not necessary. So the histology delay won't affect the outcome. Hopefully your WLE will be clear but if it isn't, the cells would have already been there before the mole had been removed. 

I hope this has helped. Good luck & please let us know how you get on,

Angie (melanoma patient)