a malignant melanoma in the nail bed of my right thumb...
this is a left big toe, but my right thumb looked very much like this...
that is, until the biopsy, then it turned really ugly...
I found some pictures that look just like it did...
but nobody would want to see them...[TMI...]
I thought that a series of injuries in the early fall of 1998...
which left half of my thumb nail discolored, but intact...
had eventually led to a nail fungus taking hold...
and was quite shocked when the dermatologist wanted...
to do an immediate biopsy...
and totally stunned when a week later...
they told me that I had a cancer under my thumb nail...
[mind you, my chances of winning the lottery were better...
that's just how rare it is to find a melanoma in a fingernail bed...]
on March 28, 2000, a surgeon in SF amputated the top joint of my right thumb...
he also removed a lymph gland from my right armpit...
which they tested to see if the cancer had spread...
it hadn't and after 4 years of monitoring & tests...
the specialist told me that it was probably due...
to the injury that hadn't healed properly...
and that if I remained cancer-free for 10 years after the surgery...
I would probably be OK... that I would have beaten it...
here's my right hand today... almost 10 years later...
I've adjusted pretty well...[being ambidextrous helps...]
unless I point out my lack of a right thumb...
most people don't notice it...
ironically, the DMV has my right thumb print on file...
and though I've brought it to their attention...
they don't seem to care...
as a public school teacher, my "current" 9.5 fingerprints...
are on file with the state, so I'm probably OK there...
last year, on February 2, the orthopedic surgeon scheduled my surgery...
the double dislocation injury was very similar to this picture...
and was treated pretty much as described in this diagram...
here's my finger on March 5, 2009, just before the pin was removed...
[the stitches had been removed 2 weeks earlier...]
here you see my hand in mid May after weeks of healing & PT...
so now, as I look back over the past 10 years of being a "cancer survivor"...
[and an "amputee"...]
and just the past year as my surgically repaired finger continues to heal...
but I battle range of motion issues, stiffness & some pain...
it gives me "pause"...
the cancer battle caused me to reassess my priorities...
resulting in my early retirement from the school district...
the dislocation and it's subsequent loss of strength & fitness...
has made me realize that I just can't do everything I want to anymore...
it's almost as if God went to great lengths to...
"take my life, out of my own hands..."
makes you think, doesn't it ?
3 comments:
I have to admit that I still scroll quickly past that photo of your finger with the metal stud sticking out! A bit squeamish, I guess.
In addition to a lesson about letting go of control to God, this also prompts us to take every skin thing seriously and have it checked, we of a certain age where sunblock did not figure prominently in our youth. I had a pre-malignant spot taken off my forearm about 5 years ago, and they didn't just excise the spot, oh no, they removed a HUNK. It took years before the divot in my arm filled in somewhat. So when a spot on my upper back didn't want to heal last year, I hied myself to a plastic surgeon and had it removed. Luckily it was benign for now, but if I had left it... who knows?
...your cautionary tales ring so true with what I learned about melanoma 10 years ago... the reason they amputated was to "get it all"... & I read story after story of people who had a surface skin lesion removed only to die of a cancerous growth in a major organ, directly beneath the lesion
5 to 10 years later because they didn't get it all... the ten year mark is important to insurance companies as a sign that it hasn't reoccurred... & makes one eligible again for most coverages... especially long-term coverage plans...
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