Melanoma and Fear

Over the past 30 years, I've had dozens of funky looking moles cut off of my body. Some have been atypical, but none were melanoma. I have so many moles, that I think I have a mole factory in my body that generates the little brown buggers; sometimes new ones show up daily. So, I went to my dermatologist, Dr. Isabell Zhu, this morning for a check-up. I had a mole that looked irregular and wanted her to look at it. It's been a few months since I saw her last, and I decided that going every six months instead of every year would be better for me. She did a full body scan, and the mole I thought was weird she said was fine, but another mole had irregular borders, so she shaved it off so that it could be biopsied.

According to the American Melanoma Foundation, the  ABCD's to look for signs of melanoma are:

A for Asymmetry
One half is different than the other half.

B for Border Irregularity
The edges are notched, uneven, or blurred.

C for Color
The color is uneven. Shades of brown, tan,
and black are present.

D for Diameter
Diameter is greater than 6 millimeters

As per the American Melanoma Foundation, melanoma is the fifth most common cancer in men, and the sixth most common in women. In 2005, at current rates, one in 34 Americans has a lifetime risk of developing melanoma. More than 73% of skin cancer deaths are from melanoma.

With these kinds of statistics, I usually get very uptight when she finds a mole that she thinks is suspicious and begin to engage in catastrophic thinking. I worry that I'll  die from melanoma. Once I start thinking fearful things, the ideas accelerate and like monkeys swinging vine to vine, the scary thoughts connect to one another and lead me in a downward spiral.  Fear rips through all levels of consciousness and my gut hurts so much that I don't want to eat. The antipsychotic meds I'm on don't seem to help keep me emotionally balanced when it comes to fear.

This time though, I'm trying to stay calm about it and not grab the "dread" thread of thinking bad thoughts. Instead, I'm trying to look at this rationally. I get regular check ups, so even if I do have melanoma, hopefully it will be caught early and then it is highly treatable. When melanoma spreads to other organs, that's when it can become deadly. In my bipolar support group, I mentioned yesterday my fears around this, and two of the women in the 8 person group had had melanoma and are fine. So, melanoma isn't a death sentence, and I need to remember that whenever I start down the path of fear.