Clear Margins

Yesterday as we drove back from Williamsburg, my cell phone rang.  I was driving, and my spouse was sleeping, so we didn't answer the phone.  Then his cell phone rang, which woke him up and made me wonder if there was bad news we needed to know about sooner rather than later.

We got the message left on my cell phone; it was a nurse from the melanoma doctor's office who was calling to "discuss the pathology report."  I exited the interstate so that we could call back from a parked car.  If it was bad news, I didn't want to be driving.  It was 4:00 on a Friday afternoon, so I didn't want to delay making the return phone call.

Of course, the nurse was with another patient, so I left a message.  We switched drivers and made our way back home.  The minutes ticked on while we waited for the call.  I wasn't anxious that we wouldn't get a return call, and I wasn't too anxious about the nature of the test results.  I figured that the worst case scenario was that the doctor didn't get it all, and we'd have to do it all again.  Since it hasn't been too bad an experience, that, too, wouldn't be terribly awful--unlike say, if I had to undergo my broken wrist experience again.  I knew that the pathology was on the tissue removed, not anything that would reveal cancer elsewhere: it's not like they did a body scan of some sort while I was undergoing surgery.

Still, it was a relief to hear the nurse say, "Your margins came back clear."  And yes, I clarified, even though I was fairly sure what she meant--they got all the melanoma.  

I feel very lucky, since it's possible that the spot has been there since summer 2024, when it was diagnosed as a bug bite.  It did look like a bug bite, and it's possible that it was, and that the melanoma came in the same spot.  But it's also possible that we missed it for over a year, which means it had that much longer to grow deep and become more dangerous.

Last night, the steri-strips came off my surgery site.  I went home with the site covered in gauze and waterproofing plastic, which we took off 3 days later.  But the steri-strips hid some of the starkness of the surgery.  The melanoma doctor did warn me that it would be lumpy, but I was expecting something like the lumpiness of cellulite, not skin that looked like two ping pong balls had been inserted on either side of an indentation.  

The stitches are underneath and will dissolve, which means there will be less scarring and eventually no lumps.  Happily, it's my arm, not my face, so I'm not too worried.  I'm relieved that there's no bleeding and no pain--not even any discomfort.  I'm trying to remember that I am supposed to take it easy in terms of lifting for the next week (no lifting of anything over 10 pounds).

Let me stress again how lucky I feel.  It could have been so much worse.  It's not how I anticipated spending part of my winter break, but here, too, I'm glad it unspooled during December, instead of other times that would have been much less convenient, like last summer when I was working a full-time CPE internship at the VA Hospital.