While I was there, I noticed a spot on my arm that got red and irritated looking. Only two of those days were warm enough to wear short sleeves. Five weeks ago, I spent a week in Florida. I was diagnosed with squamous cell skin cancer yesterday. I just hope that finding these cancers early and having them removed will be all that is necessary. I will do biopsy of newest spot on the same forearm at the same time. I will have confirmed SCC removed in January. Two days after biopsy on arm was done, I noticed another place that came up on the same arm just a few inches from the SCC. Biopsy confirmed it is squamous cell carcinoma. Next 6 month check should be in March, but went in December 21st with a spot on my left forearm that didn't look right to me. She froze it, and it healed with no problem. When I went for my 6 month check, there was a basal cell carcinoma on the shin of my other calf. Lab confirmed it was free of any cancer cells. She immediately recognized it as a squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). I went to my dermatologist to have it removed. Within 3 months, it grew to a quarter of an inch and looked like a weird wart. I noticed a little skin colored nodule on my calf and didn't think anything of it. There is an adage in medicine that goes something like, 'when you hear hoof beats think horses, not zebras.' For a healthy 30-year-old male, BCC was a zebra. The doctor at the base hospital didn't think of skin cancer as a possible diagnosis, and I'm not faulting him for that. When I got back from Korea I wasn't 30 yet. If you're keeping score this is BCC 4 and 5. I am sitting here now, early in 2018, with a surgical wound from an electrodessication and curettage, or 'scorch and scrape', on my arm and a row of stitches from the excision of another lesion on my arm. Due to the size of the lesions compared to the size of the punch, the biopsy procedure removed the entirety of the skin cancer. He did a punch biopsy on both, and both were BCC. I determined I would keep an eye on them, and when the bigger one cracked open and bled then cracked open again after it had healed I went back to my doctor to get them looked at. Two or three months later, I noted I had two new moles on my shoulder. They got it all, but left a 4-1/2 inch scar on the side of my neck. The punch biopsy came back positive for basal cell carcinoma (BCC), and the skin cancer was excised roughly two weeks later. My primary care physician was after me to let him look at it, and I finally did. I was a civilian again, with a purple spot on the side of my neck that was between the size of a Kennedy half-dollar and an Eisenhower dollar coin. The doctor at the base clinic diagnosed it as psoriasis complicated by a fungal infection and prescribed an anti-fungal cream and a steroid cream to be applied twice a day to the spot. I finally got tired of buying peroxide to clean my shirts before I laundered them, and went in to sick call. I didn't think anything of it at the time, until it began cracking open and bleeding on my uniform shirt collars. I had a purple spot on the side of my neck that was about the size of an American nickel coin I first noticed in 1989, when I got back from a duty assignment to Korea. I share his story because May is skin cancer awareness month, and you should be aware of this very rare and very aggressive skin cancer, as well as the more common ones. He’s going with the second option, to try and save what’s left of his hand, although the radiation therapy may likely damage it so severely that it will lose all function. They say he’s got a 50-50 chance either way of the cancer coming back, and if it does it will most likely be in the lung. Amputate his hand at mid-forearm, or go in through the wrist and clean out the tendon, followed by 7 weeks of radiation, 5 days a week. The surgeons don’t agree on what to do next. Another surgery is tentatively scheduled for May 24th. But, there was a bad margin, and he still has cancer on the bone, nerve and mostly in the sheath of the tendons that went to his index finger. They removed the tumor that measured in excess of 7 cm x 3 cm. After a PET scan that came back negative, his team of surgeons amputated his index finger and middle finger and half of his palm on May 3rd. It usually affects men between the ages of 50 to 70, and as far as anyone knows, he’s the youngest to have ever gotten it. This particular skin cancer forms in the sweat glands of your fingers or toes, and sometimes in the palm of your hand. He suffered no injury or trauma to the area, and at first thought it was just a callus. It was diagnosed as aggressive digital papillary adenocarcinoma in March, after an MRI and biopsy. A tumor developed around the knuckle of the index finger on his right hand. My son was diagnosed with an extremely rare form of skin cancer at the age of 24.
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