← Return to Stage 1a Melanoma: Did the wide excision clear it all?

Discussion

Stage 1a Melanoma: Did the wide excision clear it all?

Cancer | Last Active: Jan 5 8:32pm | Replies (18)

Comment receiving replies
@grammato3

Excellent summary, thank you.

Unfortunately, in my case - an amelonatic melanoma on my face in 2000 that was 0.6 mm with deep positive margins, underwent WLE with residual component of 0.3 mm melanoma, positive melanoma in Situ, Castle testing 1A. I was diligent about 6 month follow up with my dermatologist where I had a couple of basal cell excisions over the ensuing years. It was an incidenetal finding on a CT scan performed for an entirely different reason that revealed a lung nodule that turned out to be positive for metastatic melanoma, nearly 4 1/2 years after that WLE. The Castle Testing is not infalliable - in my case, it did state while there was a "low chance" of recurrence or metastatsis, there was still a 2-8% chance of mets. So the odds turned out to not be in my favor - but luckily, by the same fluke of chance it was caught early.

I am optimistic that the course of treatment I'm on - Keytruda every 3 weeks with monitoring and scans every 3-4 months for the foreseeable future - will help me stay on top of this. When I occasionally find myself going to the "dark side" I remind myself of all the ongoing success stories - and the continued advances being made in fighting this condition. We've already come a long way in the past decade alone to give tremendous encouragement.

Jump to this post


Replies to "Excellent summary, thank you. Unfortunately, in my case - an amelonatic melanoma on my face in..."

@grammato3 I'm glad to know how you are dealing with this. We could find ourselves in the same place. Even though the original surgery got all of the Melanoma, the Caste test revealed my hubby is high risk for cancer. There could be another occurrence arising independently any time. He has been seen routinely by the dermatologist with all kinds of moles removed, and going through MRI scans every year for the oncologist.