Melanoma Redux

It's been 2 years since my bout with melanoma, and last week held some promising news for future instances of the cancer, but in the meantime, I'm off to Cheraw to be with my family as my mom does battle with this formidable skin cancer for the second time in 17 years. She recently had a melanoma develop on her right arm (eerily close to the original tumor site 17 years ago) as well as two melanomas appear on her back, each shoulder blade respectively.

She's already had one set of surgery to remove the lesions from location but pathology reports that they didn't get clean enough margins from any of the cuts, which means they have to excise more from the regions of the incisions to make sure they get all of the cancerous cells. More problematic was the nature of the lesion on her arm, it was considerably more advanced than the lesions on her back - though admittedly the family hasn't revealed to what extent the cancer has been staged though mom insists that it's only stage two. Because of the severity of the cancer on her arm she'll have a Lymphadenectomy for the nodes under her right arm pit. It also appears that she'll have to go through a round or so of interferon. The second round of surgery happens tomorrow morning.

So say some prayers for the Mei family in the coming days as mom recovers and say a prayer for the promising new treatment in this cancer that it proves as successful as it promises and that we'll be able to implement it soon enough.

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