Surviving cancer, and why *you* should care

Feb 28, 2008 11:38

How I survived cancer twice, and you can too, by cupidsbow

Since Monday, I have been attempting to catch up with my life. I think I'm about a quarter of the way there (and can I just say ewwwww: being too busy to clean for 6 weeks is yet another reason I'm never overloading on work like that again!), but I'm taking a time-out this morning to make a public service announcement that I intended to make waaaay back at the start of summer. It's about cancer, and I know that's both boring and scary, but death rates are going up in Australia for cancers which are treatable if caught early, so it's time for a reminder.

Part of what has made me so whingy and stressed in the last six months (apart from unintentionally over-committing myself to work -- never again!) is that I've been dealing with three cancer scares on top of everything else. Two were for skin cancer, one was for cervical cancer.

Only one of these scares turned out to actually be cancer, and I got lucky. It was the least deadly of them, the humble BCC, or Basal Cell Carcinoma.

It has now been successfully treated, and assuming I pass my follow-up exam in four months, I'm all clear. Cancer gone. No more stress until the next scare.

The thing is, there will be a next scare. Probably in a year or so, given my age.

There will be one because nearly 1.8% of Australia's population are treated for non-melanoma skin cancers each year (Cancer Council website).

There will be one because this BCC I've just had removed is the second skin cancer I've been diagnosed with. And the first... well, it was the biggy. Melanoma. I was 17, and I hated sunbathing, and mostly spent my days fully-dressed reading books, and I still got melanoma -- right on the line of my bathers near the small of my back, right where it's easy to miss putting sunscreen.

Skin cancer is not a disease that happens to other people in Australia. We are right under the hole in the ozone layer, we're near the equator, we spend a lot of time outdoors. This is an equal opportunity cancer, and the odds are high that all of you reading this, if you live in Australia, will get skin cancer at some point in your life. All of you.

I'm not trying to scare you stupid with this sad tale of woe (although a little fear is a healthy thing, given the incidence). The point I'm making is that if you go through the relatively minor stress of regular testing, you live. If you don't, there is a real chance you will die. This is not hyperbole. Last week (if memory serves), there was a front page story in The West Australian which said that deaths from BCC were going up. The speculated reason was because people think of it as a "safe" cancer, and so put off getting it treated.

It is a "safe" cancer, in that if you treat it early, you are likely to live. People do die of it, though. Of the roughly 400,000 people diagnosed/treated with non-melanoma skin cancers, there were 405 deaths attributed to BCC in Australia in 2005 (Cancer Council website).

To get tested, go to your local GP and get them to look at any odd-shaped or coloured moles; then ask for a referral to a dermatologist. Once you have one, it'll take about 6 months to actually get in to see him or her. It's worth the wait. Molescan is a good service, but it can and does miss cancers. There's nothing like the trained and practiced eye of an expert to catch problems before they are problems.

If you think you have a dodgy mole get it checked this week. You will notice that even when I was a walking zombie with no time to wash dishes, I still made time to get my moles checked. That is because I want to live. Do not fuck around with cancer. I've seen it kill someone up close and personal. You don't want this to happen to you, believe me.

If you get a dodgy mole checked and your GP says it's nothing, keep an eye on it; if you are still worried, get a referral anyway and see the expert. You know your skin and its changes better than a GP does, and they are not specialists. No matter how good they are, they can get it wrong if the cancer doesn't look like a textbook case.

To find out what skin cancers look like, go to the Cancer Council website. They are a bit gruesome, but it's worth taking a look. My melanoma was prettier than the one pictured. It was dark black, a little rough, and almost a clear-lined oval. My BCC was a mole that changed colour, turning red and starting to grow outside the lines. Neither looked exactly like the pictures I've seen in pamphlets.

If you have any questions or worries, or want to know what something was like so that you're mentally prepared, go ahead and ask in comments. I'm not a medical expert, but I can tell you what it was like for me.

But the important thing is: get tested, do it often. Live.

misc, links, life

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