Have been diagnosed melanoma in situ, stage 0 following a biopsy in March. Realise I am very lucky, have now met with the plastics team who are planning to do a WLE end of May, earlier if any extra clinics.
Would be grateful if people could share their experiences of the WLE; is it very similar to the biopsy procedure or rather more to deal with? Any advice on dealing with the procedure is gratefully appreciated. Have just started a new job and am keen to get back to normal. I had a lot of anxiety with the biopsy - not the actual procedure but the waiting for results. I am getting help for the anxiety and am in a much better place, but would like to be prepared as much as possible for the WLE which seems to be hanging over me.
Thank you in advance,
Hi Edwina
I have had a WLE and you are right that it's a very similar procedure to the original excision. The surgeon will take a further area all around the original excision and it's usually done under a local anaesthetic. NICE recommends that a margin of at least 0.5cm is taken.
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"Never regret a day in your life, good days give you happiness, bad days give you experience"
You haven't said where your melanoma in situ was removed from, so recovery might be different from me. Mine was on my arm and only gave me mild discomfort for a few days. You will probably find that whatever discomfort you found when you had the original excision will be the same this time. The same goes for the recovery period. My arm had completely healed after a couple of weeks although it hurt if I knocked it.
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"Never regret a day in your life, good days give you happiness, bad days give you experience"
I would imagine that where yours is would mean that it would soon feel okay again as it's not in a place you're likely to knock.
I didn't do anything to aid recovery other than try not to use my arm to do any heavy lifting for the first couple of weeks. My SCNS did advise me to massage my scar with E45 cream once the wound had healed and my scar is hardly visible now. She said that it also 'taught' the skin to feel again as you might find that area feels numb for quite a while afterwards.
Let us know how you get on
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"Never regret a day in your life, good days give you happiness, bad days give you experience"
