Hi everyone. I spent some time reading the posts here over the last week or two and it's been super helpful. I wanted to add my story because I'm suffering with a lot of the same anxieties many of you are, or were.
I found a flat lesion on the bottom of my foot about a month ago and just thought I had stepped on something. A month later it was still there so I went to my dermatologist immediately.
she looked at it in her dermascope and said, "I'm going to be honest with you, this doesn't follow the [benign] pattern that it should." Ok, I knew this. I'm familiar with furrow vs ridge patterns. She asked to do a biopsy, I said please do.
I asked her why not just remove the entire thing. She said she "isn't convinced it's cancer" and thus wants to take the least invasive approach. But this is precisely where my anxiety has taken root: Acral melanoma is very rare, as in 1-2 people out of 1 million would present with it. So how could she say she isn't convinced when she, and most other doctors, have likely never even seen this type of cancer in their career. So it's no wonder she isn't convinced, she's not familiar with this.
My dad died of cancer (a different type) a few years ago, i was only 28. I don't want to go through this, the hospital visits, the constant tests. I've just had a really traumatic break up that I've been recovering from and finally felt good enough to start rebuilding my life -- I just got a new puppy ..... and now this.
I barely sleep, I try to force myself to stay awake because I feel like the bad news will come while I'm asleep, but I do that until my body is so tired I pass out. Then I wake up terrified to check my phone because I just know the call is coming to diagnose me, so I don't look.
It sounds funny, a bit, as I write this, like it's fake. But then I remember I have a hole in my foot and can't even walk on it from the shave biopsy they did.. to check for cancer.
im tired.
thanks for listening.
