Hi,

I'm sorry you are going through this worrying time but it's good that they could remove your mole on the day instead of waiting for a further appointment.

Waiting times for results differ depending on how busy each hospital histology department is, especially with Covid. It appears that they can be anything between 3 and 6 weeks I'm afraid.

If the results come back clear then you will be discharged whilst if it's dysplastic (atypical/pre-cancerous) they may want to keep an eye on you for a short time.

If the results show it's melanoma you will have another surgical procedure - a Wide Local Excision - this is a belt & braces excision which takes a larger margin of tissue around the mole area to ensure they've removed any stray cell that may have broken away. If the mole is over 0.8mm in depth they will also offer you a Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy which is carried out at the same time as the WLE. This involves dye being injected into the area of the mole to see which node(s) it travels to (Sentinel node). They then make a small incision & remove the node(s) to biopsy them for any cancer cell that may have already travelled from the melanoma. 

It's a lot to take in & hopefully it won't be the case for you. Try to keep yourself busy to distract your thoughts until your results come back. I hope your foot recovers well & no further surgery is needed. Good luck and please let us know how you get on,

Angie (melanoma patient)