worriermama
03-01-17, 18:49
Hello everyone. I'm 33 and a lifelong hypochondriac. My health anxiety hadn't been centering around anything too terrifying for the past couple years, but now I am in the midst of a severe freakout which has been going on for the past three weeks.
I had made an appointment to see the dermatologist for a skin check and for one particular mole which has been growing in the past year or two. When the checked me out, there were actually two other moles he wanted to biopsy before the one that brought me to see him. One on my side which was very dark, almost black, and not large, but the edges were pretty jagged and it wasn't round. Another round black one on my back too. So he scraped them off and after two agonizing weeks I finally heard back. The one on my back was totally normal. The funny shaped one was "severely atypical." From my reading I understand that this means it may have never turned into melanoma, but that it had a higher chance of doing so, so I'm going back this Friday for a complete excision to get rid off all the atypical cells.
This "severe atypia" diagnosis has completely freaked me out. I have two small children who are the center of my universe and I now feel like I'm a walking time bomb for skin cancer. I have fair skin, tanned a lot when I was younger and got a few bad burns (peeled, but never blistered).
I'm now even more scared about the original mole, which is on the side of my breast, which I will also have scraped off and biopsied at my appointment on friday. I am REALLY praying that it is a sebhorreic keratosis. It seems to have a lot of the attributes of an SK. It has a crusty top layer of dry skin that periodically peels off, the texture is uneven, it's mostly round, and it itches mildly on occasion. It even has one or two tiny white "pearls" which apparently are common in SK but rare in melanoma. Still, I am so terrified. I have been imagining my kids growing up without me, basically playing out all kinds of absolutely horrible mental movies in my head. This whole upset has more or less ruined Christmas and New Years for me.
I guess my question is, if the doctor looked at my moles and felt that the one on my boob could wait and that the others needed to be biopsied first, that probably means he felt more confident that it's benign, right? He does still want to take it off, he just said that he wanted to do the other ones first.
As far as the "severely atypical" diagnosis goes, I know I am considered high risk for skin cancer but if I am vigilant about doing my skin checks and going in every 6 months for a professional check, is that enough to catch anything early enough that nothing more than excision would ever be required to cure it?
I thank you if you've read this far. I am really beside myself with worry lately. I'm glad my appointment is on Friday but I am dreading the wait for yet another biopsy. I just want to get all the funny moles off my body so I can start doing monthly checks with a clean baseline.
I would love to hear from anyone else has been doing the melanoma worry road... The things you find when googling are absolutely horrifying. I haven't had this kind of health anxiety since I became a mom and it is so much worse now that there are these two little people who need me. :(
I had made an appointment to see the dermatologist for a skin check and for one particular mole which has been growing in the past year or two. When the checked me out, there were actually two other moles he wanted to biopsy before the one that brought me to see him. One on my side which was very dark, almost black, and not large, but the edges were pretty jagged and it wasn't round. Another round black one on my back too. So he scraped them off and after two agonizing weeks I finally heard back. The one on my back was totally normal. The funny shaped one was "severely atypical." From my reading I understand that this means it may have never turned into melanoma, but that it had a higher chance of doing so, so I'm going back this Friday for a complete excision to get rid off all the atypical cells.
This "severe atypia" diagnosis has completely freaked me out. I have two small children who are the center of my universe and I now feel like I'm a walking time bomb for skin cancer. I have fair skin, tanned a lot when I was younger and got a few bad burns (peeled, but never blistered).
I'm now even more scared about the original mole, which is on the side of my breast, which I will also have scraped off and biopsied at my appointment on friday. I am REALLY praying that it is a sebhorreic keratosis. It seems to have a lot of the attributes of an SK. It has a crusty top layer of dry skin that periodically peels off, the texture is uneven, it's mostly round, and it itches mildly on occasion. It even has one or two tiny white "pearls" which apparently are common in SK but rare in melanoma. Still, I am so terrified. I have been imagining my kids growing up without me, basically playing out all kinds of absolutely horrible mental movies in my head. This whole upset has more or less ruined Christmas and New Years for me.
I guess my question is, if the doctor looked at my moles and felt that the one on my boob could wait and that the others needed to be biopsied first, that probably means he felt more confident that it's benign, right? He does still want to take it off, he just said that he wanted to do the other ones first.
As far as the "severely atypical" diagnosis goes, I know I am considered high risk for skin cancer but if I am vigilant about doing my skin checks and going in every 6 months for a professional check, is that enough to catch anything early enough that nothing more than excision would ever be required to cure it?
I thank you if you've read this far. I am really beside myself with worry lately. I'm glad my appointment is on Friday but I am dreading the wait for yet another biopsy. I just want to get all the funny moles off my body so I can start doing monthly checks with a clean baseline.
I would love to hear from anyone else has been doing the melanoma worry road... The things you find when googling are absolutely horrifying. I haven't had this kind of health anxiety since I became a mom and it is so much worse now that there are these two little people who need me. :(