February, 2025
We now jump to jump to early 2026 and I hear back from the plastic surgery dept with my consultation date (late Feb). So, the day comes and we head off to the John Radcliffe (JR) plastic surgery dept where we meet one of the plastic surgeons on the team who again is really nice and compassionate. He once again gives me the body interrogation just to make sure no new worrying moles have appeared since my last check in Oct. I’m given the ok which is a relief to hear. Just another reminder in case you haven’t read my earlier blog, that the checks leave no stone, or in this case skin unturned so make sure you are prepared!

He then walks through what will happen next. He says there are 3 options but he has one option which he would choose himself if he was in my position, that being the two procedures that Kerrie had prepped me with back in Dec (see Results day post). The other options are to do nothing or only have the extra skin/tissue taken away. By the way, he did mention that an extra 2cm of skin will be taken away from my arm, so I guess my left forearm will look even skinnier after that is taken away! I’m also told that by having the operation, the chances of catching skin cancer again are drastically reduced. Doctors dont know why, but there is a good chance that the cancer can return within 5 years. But out of 100 people having the extra surgery, 85 are found to have no cancer afterwards.

I think I have been enough of a wimp already, so I said I’d go with the full procedure. So, it is then explained what will happen i.e when the skin is taken out, my existing skin will either stitch together or potentially more likely a skin graft will be needed. At the same time, some radioactive stuff will be pumped into my arm and doctors will use a giga counter to track which lymph nodes the goo gets sent to, as these will be the nodes that will be taken out as these are where the skin pass my fluid to. So if there is cancer this is where they’d be passed to. As well as the goo, some blue stuff will be put into my arm as an additional tracking method – luckily, I’ll be fast asleep through all of this because there is no way I could handle being awake during all of this. Then comes all of the potential things that could happen post op. I won’t cover all of them but one that did make me laugh is that my wee could be green for 24 hours or so due to the stuff pumped into my arm. Hopefully I won’t turn into Spider-Man or a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle from the radioactive goo! I ask when the op may happen, and I am told that normally it should be within four weeks, so now I wait….