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I’m devastated and struggling with vaginal melanoma
Gynecologic Cancers | Last Active: Jan 25 4:38pm | Replies (26)Comment receiving replies
@rashida I saw the original vulvar melanoma myself. At one of my regular 6 month checkups, my gym oncologist did her usual internal exam and spotted a tiny mark in a fold in the vaginal wall near cervix.
Replies to "@rashida I saw the original vulvar melanoma myself. At one of my regular 6 month checkups,..."
@hoping4cure: spiriling and melanoma unfortunately seem to go hand and hand. And researching online frequently reinforces that. I hope it helps to read the perspective from people like @kanderstag who have been through a similar experience and can share such a positive outcome with you.
One thing I learned after my own metastatic melanoma diagnosis (funny, autofill wanted to put in “meltdown” for melanoma- which could have been an appropriate substitution!) was how outdated some of the information was in terms of prognosis. Brachytherapy and newer treatments have shown such tremendous progress in treating our conditions.
Do you find a degree of reassurance in hearing this?
@hoping4cure in Canada - at least in a Ontario where I live, doctors don’t do Pap smears after age 70. I have been diagnosed with vaginal lichen sclerosis by my physician and it has been kept in control with Clobetasol the past couple of years. My eyesight is bad so I can’t check myself for melanoma, but I hope my doctor would have noticed if I had it, when she examined me a couple of years ago …?
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@hoping4cure Thank heavens you are consistent about going to your regular 6 month checkups. This is how my recurrence for endometroid adenocarcinoma was discovered through a physical/pelvic exam. This is too awful to consider but imagine what would happen had we not returned for our scheduled exams?
I know it's tempting to look up our respective cancers and treatments on the internet. But I realized that this only fed my anxiety and did not provide me with reliable and valid information. My gyn oncologist and radiation oncologist both told me that the information from reliable websites is often out of date by the time it appears. So I had to tell myself to trust and rely on what my oncologists told me.
Our emotions don't easily follow our logical minds. With what I wrote above, please consider trusting your "wise mind" which is the combination of your emotions and your logical mind. I have had to do this over and over again. I still do.
Do you have appointments set up for your next steps in treatment?