Dissection

Hi  and a very warm welcome to the online community

I was diagnosed with melanoma (stage 2a, 1.45mm thick) and had a WLE and SLNB four years ago.

Mine was on my upper left arm and there was enough skin that the surgeon was able to stitch it back together without the need for a skin graft. The dye travelled, as expected, to one of the lymph nodes in my left armpit so that was removed. Thankfully both that and the skin from the WLE came back negative for melanoma.

I think SLNBs can be a little bit trickier when a melanoma is found on the back because the lymphatic system drains to so many different places from there.  has recently had a WLE and SLNB on their back so I'm tagging them into my reply to you in the hope that they might be able to pop on and tell you about their experience.

Wishing you all the best for next week and do come back and let us know how you get on.

x

Hmmm mine was on my back at bra level on the left. They told me that my node could have been in my left armpit or my neck if it went to both then both would be removed. It ended up being in my left armpit. I’ve just got my letter today that went to my Dr and it seems they took two nodes...I’m assuming they were close together. You’ll find out when they put the dye in and scan the lady that did mine was great she even let me watch the screen as she did the scan. I had mine 2 weeks in Tuesday and I’ve healed really well mind I’ve been very careful with it. X

Hiya, 

Thank you so much for your reply. 

I'm really pleased to hear you are healing well.

I'm being injected with the tracer next week so I'll know more then. It's just a scary time isn't it? I lost my mum to melanoma so emotions gave been running high xx

Hiya 

Thanks so much for your reply. I'm glad to hear your results were negative! 

Yes mine is in a very complicated place making the biopsy harder. 

I just want this next over

Thanks again 

Jayne xx

The waiting is the worst! It must be so hard with losing your mum. It sounds like you’ve caught it early x

As a newbie on melanoma, is there a glossary of abbreviations handy somewhere please? Thanks

Hi Denby and sorry that you're having to join us here.

I don't think there's a glossary as such but if you'd like to tell me what abbreviations you'd like 'translating' I'd be happy to help.

If you're referring to the abbreviations in my reply to Mrs Babs then WLE stands for wide local excision, which is the operation to remove a further area of skin when a lesion turns out to be melanoma, and SLNB stands for sentinel lymph node biopsy, which is an optional procedure done at the same time as the WLE to see if the melanoma cells have already travelled to the nearest lymph gland.

x

Thanks, I'm starting to get my head round it. A taste for jargon and my late mum's background in medical publishing sub-editing do come in handy sometimes.

Hi

I'm just checking in to see how your WLE and SLNB went. Hopefully, you're not too sore.

x

Hiya Latchbrook

Thank you for your message. The op went well. The radioactive tracer went in 2 directions so I ended up having 2 nodes removed from either side of my neck and tissue removed from my back. Its very sore as I have 3 wounds in 3 separate places.

The surgeon also said I'm going to be in pain for a while as he had to go very deep and I have 3 layers of internal stitches.

I'll hopefully have my results in a couple of weeks

Thank you for asking. I hope you're well xx