CANDICE POWELL

Stage:Stage II

So this is the first time I’ve ever wrote about my melanoma. I was diagnosed 3 & 1/2 years ago. I was diagnosed with the nodular type and middle of the middle thickness (God knows what that means). It took me a whole year to persuade my doctor that my mole wasn’t right, I had to pay to have it removed and that’s when they found it was melanoma. I was VERY lucky it didn’t spread, I just had a lot of tissue cut out of my shoulder and that got rid of it all. Waiting for the results was the most terrifying experience of my life, I didn’t know if I was going to live or die at that point. I had 2 young babies and was a single mum, my life just stopped still. I started having the worst panic attacks ever, begging my mum to take me to hospital for them to sedate me. It was that bad, I just don’t know how I got through it. When I finally went for my results they told me I was cured, I felt like the luckiest person alive. So it’s been 3 & 1/2 years since and it’s not come back. My check ups have gone from 3 months to 6 months and it’s slowly going to the back of my mind. I know it’s 5 years until full remission but I’m going the right way and I’m very vigilant with checking myself too. It’s a really awful thing to go through and I won’t lie it has changed me as a person but I just think how lucky I’ve been.