JENNIFER TRESSLER

Stage:Stage I

I am blue eyed, blonde, and raised in California. I knew that skin cancer existed, but was a vague and distant non threat.
When I realized that I had a “freckle” on my upper left arm that had maybe grown and darkened, I went and had it looked at. I was told that it was “nothing”.
Fast forward about four years, that same spot had changed colors; it was half brown and half blackish. It also had an odd tingly sensation to it, which I realized wasn’t right. I had another doctor (I had relocated) look at it, and although he also said that it was nothing, he did agree to remove it and had it biopsied. A week later, I was very surprised to receive a call from his office, asking me to come in at my earliest convenience, no appointment necessary.
Once there, they hustled my husband and myself into the exam room, and the doctor came in and said the words… Malignant Melanoma, Stage ll. He said that the next step was a wide local excision, with a lymph node search and biopsy. I felt totally fuzzy about everything coming out of his mouth. He kept saying “You CAN survive this”… Before I left, he repeated it again, and he said, are you understanding what I’m saying? I said Yes, this could potentially kill me.
A week later I had the WLE. The nuclear medicine was the worst, injecting that horrible dye into my site. WOW, was that painful. The surgeon had already told me that their staging was more of a 1, although, again, with no letter or definition. I still do not know why the original path report said stage two, but the surgeon said one. He said that the slnb was probably not necessary, but I wanted it done for sanity’s sake.
Surgery went fine, they found no further cancer cells in the skin or the lymph node, which I didn’t find out for another week. I did have one follow up with an oncologist, who told me that no treatment was necessary. I was told to have six month dermatology exams, and otherwise no further care would be needed.
Needless to say, since that experience in 2009, I have the typical heightened awareness of what goes on with my body. I had a big horse accident in 2013, in which I broke two vertebra and suffered a subdural hematoma. The worst lingering effect is that I have a large patch of skin on my back which has zero feeling. Total numbness. I also have lots of aches, cramps, and pains in my torso. When you lose an inch in height, everything gets crowded inside, I guess, and the parts no longer happily cohabitate. So when I feel weird pains in my gut, in my back, in the kidney area, I have no idea whether it’s the dreaded melanoma, or a simple cramp or spasm. It makes it all so unclear!