I’m sitting here late at night, instead of being snuggled up with my beloved, because I hurt - I had a mole removed from my, ahem, nipple, today, and it hurts like blazes, preventing sleep.
Two different dotors looked at it, said “That should come off right away,” then made soothing noises about how it was just a precaution, highly unlikely it would be cancerous, etc. I’m just trying to reconcile their decisive action with their reassurances.
Anyone have any thoughts? Sue from El Paso? GasDr? anyone else?
One of the more common conditions I treat, jti, is thyroid nodules.
About 10% of them are cancerous. Patients are understandably wary when I talk about jabbing a needle into their neck “right by the carotid!?!?!” :eek: to get cells out to allow me to tell if their nodule is cancerous or not.
I usually try to see these people & do the aspiration right away, though, for a number of reasons.
Usually fear of the unknown is worse than the actual disease process.
People hear all kinds of crap from well-maning friends, family members & web sources. And message boards, too… :rolleyes:
A little bit of CMA. It’s much easier to establish rapport if the patient is not strung out from needless sleepless nights. This rapport makes my job much more pleasant overall, but is also key in preventing legal action should anything go wrong. It really is a win-win situation.
Obviously I can’t advise you from here about the chances of your lesion being cancerous, but I can tell you to listen to their words, and don’t try to draw inferences from their “decisiveness”. That just causes headaches :).
Call your doctor’s office first thing in the morning and get something for pain that will work. In the meantime, tylenol can be safely combined with aspirin or ibuprofen, unless your docs told you not to take aspirin or ibuprofen due to bleeding worries.
Pain & worry exacerbate each other. Get something effective for the pain. Call in sick to work & get some sleep tomorrow. Take care of the rest of you; you can’t do anything to change the biopsy result now.
Lots of positive thoughts heading northward…
Sue from El Paso
Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.
Hey jti,
My thoughts are with you. For what it’s worth though, even if it does turn out to be malignant, it’s not necessarily all that bad. Having cancer these days is not always a descent into hell! Keep taking your painkillers, and let us know how it turns out.
PS. Majormd, keep up the good work. I was one of those 10%.
I know just what you’re going through. Last year I had a mole removed from my back. It was a big ugly thing, about the size of a dime. I had it all my life, but my dermatologist didn’t like the looks of it, and told me to have it removed as soon as possible. She didn’t even biopsy it, just cut it right off. She made it sound like it was going to be nothing, but now I know she just didn’t want to scare me. The procedure took about a half hour, and I needed about 4 extra shots of the local anestesia. I cried and cried, and I bled so much the incision had to be cauterized. I still wasn’t fully numb, and I felt the sizzle. Anyway, 18 stitches later, I was ready to go home. The surgery was nothing compared to the horrible week of waiting for the results. Thankfully, the mole wasn’t malignant. I hope yours isn’t either. The waiting is the worst part. Good luck, and keep us posted.
The docs wanted to remove your mole because that reduces your chance of developing melanoma in the future. IIRC, moles are more likely to develop melanoma than normal skin, especially if they are irregularly shaped, dark in color, flat or have changed recently. This doesn’t mean that any mole you have is automatically cancerous - just that you can reduce your chances of getting cancer by getting them cut off (sort of like eating your broccoli!)
I’ve had a lot of moles removed & biopsied - none of them were cancerous. I wouldn’t be worried - the doctors are just playing it safe.
Interesting side note - I have a lot of moles on my torso. The last time I went to a dermatologist, I made a joke about two I call an extra pair of nipples. He commented that moles are more likely to grow around the milk line.