What are you looking for?
Featured Topics
Select a topic to start reading.
I've had moles on my body for as long as I can remember. My grandmother on my mother's side and my grandfather on my father's side both have these kinds of moles all over their body, so as a child, I never really saw it as an issue. My mother noticed different moles on my body, but she never got it looked at by a specialist. Now that I'm older, I can do it for myself, but life has been throwing things my way and, at times, I forget about the moles.
I've discussed the moles with my primary doctors, but they would tell me to go to a specialist. Finding a specialist who takes my insurance is a hassle within itself, so I usually end up forgetting about it all, because life has a way of throwing things at you to make you forget about things until it's brought up again.
I've been getting random bouts of dull pain in my body, but it's been like this ever since my GERD diagnosis years ago. The pain has been more frequent, so I mentioned it to my doctors a few weeks back. They ran tests on me and everything checked out to be good as far as my blood, but today, I thought about my moles and how it could possibly be related to the pain I'm having. With a quick google search, I just found out that skin cancer can't be diagnosed with a blood test. It's a scary ass thought to know that skin cancer is a possibility of what I have, and I'm pretty shaken up about it.
Today is Sunday, so I can't call the office I found that may or may not take my insurance. I'm going to give them a call tomorrow so that I can get this situated. If they don't take my insurance, I'm back to square one. It's going to take some time to save money for the visit, since I have bills and rent and shit to pay.
I just wanna make sure that I'm okay so that I don't have to worry about it. Life has already been so hard for me these past few years. I just hope that whatever this is isn't serious, so that it won't be another thing for me to worry about.
If you see a comment that is unsupportive or unfriendly, please report it using the flag button.
I hope so too. Good luck for tomorrow. I hope you are in great health and stay that way.
ReplyI hope everything will be okay. I obviously cannot offer real medical advice but I know a moderate amount—I hope it is comforting to know that many, many skin cancers (like basal cell or squamous cell) are benign or so slow-growing that they are not very invasive to treat and not a big deal even if they've been developing for years. Even melanoma, while it can be scary as the most aggressive skin cancer, can often be caught and dealt with simply by removing the mole or affected area. Your bloodwork being normal is a great sign, since you probably would have had some abnormal levels that stood out if anything had metastasized (you can't diagnose cancer in a blood test, sure, but there can be abnormal levels that signal something weird is going on that would probably show up.) You may end up with a scar and a few stitches if your moles are becoming a problem, but often that's all. They found a few patches of melanoma on my mom over the years and the worst she's ever had to deal with was a slightly deep patch on her leg that took a month or two to heal up after it was removed. What matters most is that you're taking care of your health now, and you can hopefully breathe a little easier knowing that skin cancers are usually extremely localized (meaning only in one spot, and therefore removing the spot removes 100% of the cancer) and easily treatable when you catch them. I hope all of your exams go smoothly and hope that all is well.
Reply