Yeah, I had to put it all over my face, forehead, cheeks, temples, neck....felt like...
Melanoma :(
- Thread starter Drago6
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5-FU (Carac) is a great, old but effective way to treat AK's, optimally not in summertime; should be followed with topical steroid "calmdown". Very good "clean-up". Mohs is for SCC, BCC and few rarer birds.
Mohs is NOT optimal for melanoma - it is used with a huge *exception on areas where you just can't cut (or won't) take wide margins. Melanoma cells in skin are suboptimal to analyze with frozen section the way SCC & BCC are, typical is done very different from SCC/BCC Mohs. John McCains' face was proof that Mohs isn't effective for melanoma (it recurred and metastasized, he ended up with a split-thickness skin graft over most of one side of his face to watch for recurrence). There are well developed protocols for the margins, studies for melanoma are based on depth; treatment is based on staging.
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Man speaks the truth about that cream. It will burn like hell, the first few days you think you are wasting your time, but then it gets going and don't stop for a good while.
They told me to use it for a month. Near the end of the month I started feeling like I was coming down with the flu. That lasted a few days so I looked on the internet for side effects and sure enough "Can cause chills and or fever". Stopped using it and that cleared right up. Potent stuff.
Scars are good. You tell the chicks..."Yeah that ______________ got me good, but you should see what I did to him."
Best protocol for topical 5 FU is twice a day for two weeks in fall or winter, followed by two weeks of topical steroids for calm down...from a speaker for that product for the company in its early years (Dermik).
"Its no joke" because it is an actual chemotherapy, 5-flourouracil, used for breast and lung cancer among other cancers. It was actually when people got this chemo. for internal cancers and their skin actinic keratoses would light up and fall off - that somebody realized this had potential application to be expanded into a topical treatment for precancers. But this isn't relevant to melanoma. And we can have a discussion on Aldara - which I referred to once as a drug looking for something to treat when its original purpose couldn't re-cover its cost to the Pharma company owner- later.
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I think I’m right around 16 BCC surgeries, mostly Mohs. They’ve frozen me so often it’s fucking with the ozone layer. I keep flourouracil around permanently. They’ve taken so much of my hide off that my dermatologist has a pair of shoes and a matching purse that look like me. I wish they gave out green stamps. 
God bless you and your family. I know what it is like to have some health scares. I am old enough to be your dad, so mine are about blood pressure and cholesterol.
On the other hand, I have been blessed. I had a colonoscopy last November and they found 4 benign polyps and got rid of them. I asked if they found Jimmy Hoffa but they did not find him.
I smoked cigarettes from May 25, 1982 to January 29, 2018. Almost 36 years. So, my doc had me go through a lung cancer study with a screening. No nodules or masses or tumors. Luck of the Irish.
However, I have had bad teeth throughout my life. My first root canal was when I was 9 years old. So, a month ago, I had the remaining teeth removed and now have dentures. Reminds me of a guy who had dentures since young adulthood from an accident. One time, he said, he took them out and put them in his back pocket. Then sat down and gave himself an ass-chewing.
Anyway, get your straggler removed quickly and live a full life.
I just saw a NASA animation where audio was played of the sound of a black hole. A mechanical radar sweep was superimposed over the black hole as if they were using the mechanical radar to listen to the black hole.
It was the dumbest thing I had seen this year until I read this post.
I don’t know what’s dummer, the post I made there, or you not realizing it was a joke. Quit being dumb and read my other posts in the thread. I know you have the time if you’re into shit posting like this…
Met the with the specialist last week, surgery scheduled for this Thursday. He was optimistic which was a slight relief, although i'm still a nervous wreck thinking about the "what if it's spread", etc.
Since the diagnosis I've done 2 water only fasts of 60 hours each, the primary goal being autophagy of course. It's not terribly hard since my appetite is already suppressed from the nerves
Since the diagnosis I've done 2 water only fasts of 60 hours each, the primary goal being autophagy of course. It's not terribly hard since my appetite is already suppressed from the nerves
Glad to hear you’re scheduled to have it removed! Melanoma is no joke.Met the with the specialist last week, surgery scheduled for this Thursday. He was optimistic which was a slight relief, although i'm still a nervous wreck thinking about the "what if it's spread", etc.
Since the diagnosis I've done 2 water only fasts of 60 hours each, the primary goal being autophagy of course. It's not terribly hard since my appetite is already suppressed from the nerves
With melanoma, depth is what really matters (we are talking millimeters here). Melanoma in situ (MIS), meaning confined to the epidermis only, generally has favorable outcomes with a wide local excision. Once breaching into the dermis, invasive melanoma can potentially access the lymphatics and spread.
I just recently finished my Mohs surgery fellowship a few weeks ago and we removed melanoma on a daily basis. You’ll definitely be friends with derm for a while, but I think it offers patients peace of mind knowing they’ve got eyes on their skin.
Weirdly enough, my wife had an invasive melanoma on her left upper arm when I was applying for my dermatology residency. She had a wide local excision and sentinel lymph node biopsy and now has a large scar on her arm, but the scar was a good trade compared to the alternative.
I totally understand the nerves surrounding the procedure - keeping my fingers crossed all goes well for you!
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Well I had the post-op visit today. Overall pretty good news, he said he got it all out and the margins were what he wanted to see so that was a relief! The "nuance" is that the total size was slightly larger than the original dermatologist slice biopsy showed, i believe he said in the .85-.90 range.
So while the margins were good, he said that statistically speaking the updated size increases the possibility of lymph involvement by 3-4%, so i'm now at somewhere in the 6-9% risk. He recommended doing to the sentinel node biopsy, as it is the only way of knowing 100% whether it has been successfully eliminated or not. He said i was "right on the line" of whether or not he would even recommend the biopsy, but he said that being on the young'ish side and overall very good health he thinks it would be the right decision.
I asked about the risks/damage of the lymph biopsy, i.e. is this going to permanently mess up my lymph system? He said that the chance of permanent issues was under 10%, while i do trust him i was just going to do a bit of research to make sure that is accurate. The prospect of a lifetime of lymph issues is almost as terrifying as cancer.
Assuming the lymph risk is genuinely sub 10%, I'm leaning towards doing it for some damn peace of mind. This experience has wrecked my nerves enough!
So while the margins were good, he said that statistically speaking the updated size increases the possibility of lymph involvement by 3-4%, so i'm now at somewhere in the 6-9% risk. He recommended doing to the sentinel node biopsy, as it is the only way of knowing 100% whether it has been successfully eliminated or not. He said i was "right on the line" of whether or not he would even recommend the biopsy, but he said that being on the young'ish side and overall very good health he thinks it would be the right decision.
I asked about the risks/damage of the lymph biopsy, i.e. is this going to permanently mess up my lymph system? He said that the chance of permanent issues was under 10%, while i do trust him i was just going to do a bit of research to make sure that is accurate. The prospect of a lifetime of lymph issues is almost as terrifying as cancer.
Assuming the lymph risk is genuinely sub 10%, I'm leaning towards doing it for some damn peace of mind. This experience has wrecked my nerves enough!
I am glad to hear it was not worse Drago. I know you are a nervous wreck. But that it a good thing. Take this very seriously.
Both of my parents have had melanoma. Buried my Wife's Grandmother last year from it. I grew up in Miami in the 70s and spent most of my time at the beach. Paying for it very badly now.
Both of my parents have had melanoma. Buried my Wife's Grandmother last year from it. I grew up in Miami in the 70s and spent most of my time at the beach. Paying for it very badly now.
Sorry to hear that Philly. It's definitely some scary shit, i dont even get 'that' much sun. I had my fair share of sunburns going to the beach when younger like most, but it's not like i was spending all summer in the sun or anything crazy. I'm pasty white and live in New England. I know guys who work construction and are outside 10 hours a day in the beating sun and not so much as a cancerous freckle
C'est la vie i suppose, I just thank God it was caught when it was.
Thanks for the update and good luck. It sounds like you are making the correct informed decisions.
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