Health & Fitness
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Skin cancer diagnosis-anyone?
Just curious to hear other's stories that have received a diagnosis. What type? Were you surprised or caught off guard or not really?
I have my annual tomorrow and have a couple of spots I'm concerned with. I've had a basal in the past which totally shocked me and then a couple of other spots removed but were fine. I'm paranoid of melanoma!
Re: Skin cancer diagnosis-anyone?
Every year I have several basal cell carcinomas removed. The first one was when I was pregnant with my first daughter and scared the beejeesus out of me. Since then, I've been able to identify them on my own for the most part, so it's not such a big deal anymore.
I did have one spot that was removed from my hairline on my temple that came back as suspicious and required further removal but it turned out just to be something weird but not scary, just weird.
I, too, am paranoid of melanoma and it's definitely caused me to be a lot better about wearing sunscreen on a daily basis. I'm still not perfect about it, but better.
I'm a ghostly white red head living in Houston, Texas and born in Florida so I wasn't surprised by any of the diagnosis and my grandfather and uncle have had melanoma and my dad has had lots of the BCCs removed as well. What's changed the most is how paranoid I am about protecting my two girls from sunburn. I'm hyper vigilant about them because I know a lot of my issues come from being a child of the late 70s where my mom thought baby oil was adequate sunscreen.
j+k+m+e | running with needles
My Husband has had a couple Basal's removed recently, he is pretty fair skinned/had red hair as a kid...
My Dad has had melanoma's removed. So far (besides a chunk of flesh on his back) hasn't been that big of a deal. He sees the dermo every 4 months now.
I get yearly checks and so far only had one suspicious. It scares me big time! Good luck to you!
It seems that monitoring can keep it at bay.
I had melanoma removed in 2007. It was my first time going to the derm ever. Now I go every 6 months and have lots of shave biopsies done - they are all teeny tiney freckles that are black compared to my other freckles. I don't have a lot of moles per se, just little freckles. A good bit of them come back positive for pre-cancer, so I have to get re-excisions done on those. We keep this up until the majority of shave biopsies come back negative - that means she really has to look hard to find anything abnormal on me - a good thing! My derm said that the amount that I've had is rare and most people don't need to have so many removed.
Now I am super cautious about how much time I spend in the sun and I lather up very thoroughly when I know I will be exposed for a while (and I re-apply often). As much as it sucks to have had melanoma, it has been great to see so many of my family and friends go to the derm and take better care of their skin because of what happened to me.
I had a melanoma removed a year ago. It wasn't a huge surprise because there is a history of skin cancer in my family, but I was surprised it was melanoma. (I found out after my diagnosis that my great aunt had had it once but it was no biggie, no radiation or anything.)
It was my first time going to the dermatologist, I knew I needed to but had put it off until my doctor sent me because she didn't like a mole on my back. That mole came back fine, but a spot on my forehead came back for melanoma in situ (stage 0). I was so lucky we caught it early! I had Moh's surgery then went to a plastic surgeon for repair. It looks pretty good now, when I have makeup on you can hardly see the scar.
I had to go back for checkups every 3 months for the first year. I have had two other moles biopsied since then but they both came back benign so fingers crossed that my appointment in a couple weeks will be the last 3 month one. If everything goes well this time, I can cut back to 6 months for two years.
Running and recipe blog
Interesting article about melanoma on the rise among young women.
http://news.runnersworld.com/2012/04/02/huge-jump-in-melanomas-among-young-women/?cm_mmc=NL-Womens-_-871642-_-04112012-_-Melanoma-On-the-Rise
I meant to add that you are doing the best thing you can do which is be proactive. A melanoma diagnosis isn't a death sentence and as long as you catch it early the treatment can be minimal. Good luck, I'm sure everything will be fine!
Running and recipe blog