December, 2025
A couple of weeks later Lisa and I returned to the Churchill to get my results. We met Kerrie, a Skin Cancer Nurse Specialist, who was lovely. In fact everyone I had met up til now had been lovely. She held no punches and came straight out with it. ‘We have done the tests and you have been found positive for a malignant melanoma”. Oh crap. However the good news is that the cancer is out of my body because the mass of skin taken out by Doctor Ben showed no sign of cancer beyond a small part of the skin. However, there is a recommended tolerance/distance recommend between the skin taken out and the skin/tissue in my arm and I was slightly short of this. So Kerrie tells me that she is going to refer me to the plastic surgery dept as a further procedure will be needed. I’m told that the procedure will cover 2 things:

1) They want to take some more skin/tissue from my arm so that there is no chance that the melanoma has spread
2) They may need to take some lymph nodes out because if the cancer has spread, it will go there. If it has, the lymph nodes could then pass it to other parts of my body.

But the big takeaway is that I am cancer free on my left forearm and these procedures are totally precautionary rather than reactive. So of course I ask all the important questions like “what do I tell my travel insurance” and when I get a new job (still hadn’t found one by this time) “what do I tell the healthcare provider if I get health insurance”. Stress can definitely do strange things to your mind and make your mouth work in stupid ways because there were so many more important questions I could have asked including “could the cancer have travelled through my body already?”. But no, let’s focus on the stupid stuff. 

Kerrie was great and she walked me through tons of stuff including how I am now on the radar and that the cancer team will be looking after me for a 5 year period including annual health checks, and that I’d also have access to MacMillan if I ever needed support. I mentioned that I was out of work and she mentioned that MacMillan may be able to offer financial advice and help with benefits including PIP and ESA if I wanted to go down this path. As we left, Kerrie mentioned that the plastic surgery department would be in touch to arrange the next appointment. Lisa and I wished her a merry Christmas as it was now December and we went on to enjoy the Christmas holidays. As an added bonus, we even made it to Ally Pally for an afternoon session at the darts which was great and just what I’d needed to take my mind off things.