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Melanoma & Skin Cancer support: Introduce yourself and connect
Melanoma & Skin Cancer | Last Active: Dec 30, 2025 | Replies (145)Comment receiving replies
I am 74 years old and female. I have had a few SCCs and five melanomas, all in situ, until last week. My sixth melanoma is a recurrence from the first one in 2018. It is invasive and I am awaiting instructions from my melanoma doctor. Since this is the holiday week, he is out, but last Friday he ordered the slides so he could make a plan. I see a local dermatologist at least twice a year, and the director of the melanoma institute at Northwestern Medical in Chicago twice a year, thus my skin checks are every 3 months, plus I have skin mapping every year at Northwestern. I expect to hear something at the first of the week, hopefully Monday, but as you can imagine it. has been a very stressful holiday. Praying and keeping my fingers crossed.
Replies to "I am 74 years old and female. I have had a few SCCs and five melanomas,..."
@blc1951: Thank you for introducing yourself and providing this background information. I can well appreciate the anxiety you must be feeling as you await more information from your melanoma provider. It's a scary time waiting to hear the outcome; I find it helps to be prepared for all eventualities. I'll post this information from Mayo so you may be more prepared for diagnosis guidelines and treatment options if you're interested - it's not to alarm you as "invasive" can run the gamut of stages and optimistically with your diligence in skin checks it does appear you were likey to have caught this early, In any event, there would be a variety of options available to you that your doctor can discuss with you once all the results are available.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/melanoma/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20374888
As @budisnothome summarized, skin mapping uses high resolution photography to track skin changes (moles/spots) compared to baseline photo to focus on detecting suspicious growths for analysis. This can provide for earlier detection of skin cancer.
Will you let me know next week what your doctor reported and what the treatment plan will be?
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@blc1951
Looks like you are getting good medical care. Did you have a past history of skin burns and excessive sun exposure?
I agree with being stressful. Hard not worry about. It seems like my skin cancer are really getting worse (more of them) and can't figure out why the changed from BCCs to SCCs.
I just learned what the in situ meant as I researched my last SCC surgery. If going to have SCC you want it to be in situ. I just had two surgeries for SCC. One was done via MOHS and the other cut and cauterized. Seems one was in situ and the other deep growing.
If you don't mind answering, what is skin mapping?