Patty Knight

What is time?  It can be many different things to many different people. Time can be many different things to a single person depending on the day, the time of day, the mood, so on and so on.

The one thing that is certain is that time does not stand still.  Live life like there is no tomorrow.  So what does time have to do with me?

The time has come for me to begin treatment for malignant metastatic nodule melanoma.  I originally decided to create a blog so that I could share my story with others who may be experiencing the same fate or for others just looking for daily inspirations.  As you can see I have not posted much because there was not much to post.  I was diagnosed with nodular melanoma stage IIIb,  Breslow thickness 1.92 and Clark level 0f at least 4 in February 2012.  I had a wide leg excision on my outer right thigh and sentinel node removed.  The sentinel node came back positive but the wide leg excision had clean borders which showed that all the cancer had been removed.  I then underwent a total lymph node dissection of my right groin and a muscle flap from my right thigh.  Only one lymph node was positive for nodular melanoma.  The doctors felt that I had a very low chance of reoccurrence.  Good news, so I thought.  I would then be scheduled for checkups every three months with pet scans every 6 months.  Yep, as many of you know, I was the lucky one who did not fall into the category of NED (no evidence of disease).  The pet scan showed areas of lymph node involvement in both the right and left pelvic nodes.  I went back into surgery to have them removed and the pathology report showed no cancer.  Whew I was lucky.  I returned to my regular 3 month visits and all was looking good.  Just when we were ready to change my appointments to every 6 months I had another reoccurrence that appeared in my right buttox.  Wow another surgery and once again I was cancer free.  As expected I was back to 3 month followup appointments and 6 month pet scans.  This was good for a while then…..yep you guessed it I had another reoccurrence.  This time I had one area on my butt and one on my back.  Surgery was scheduled for two weeks from the time my biopsies came back positive.  I went in two weeks later for surgery and told my surgeon that in the two weeks that I was waiting for surgery I had a third area show up.  I had surgery and all 3 areas of cancer removed. According to the pathology report all three were malignant metastatic nodular melanoma.  Well once again it looks like we got it all except for a new area that showed up on my pet scan.  It looks like I may have cancer in my spleen. All I can say is that cancer has a mind of its own.  I should not have had any reoccurrence of cancer and yet here I am with possibly a new cancer spot on my spleen.  After long discussions with my physicians we decided that we can no longer continue to just cut the cancer out of my body.  We decided that it is time to start chemo treatments.  I am actually going to be taking two drugs, Tafinlar and Mekinist.  I will begin treatments on January 25th.  I will do my best to post how I feel and how things are going in hopes of helping others who may be going through the same thing.

I am truly blessed to have such amazing physicians, family and friends.  I know that I will beat my cancer.  I am strong, I have to many things to do in this life and I plan on doing them all before I check out.  I have a strong support group who sends prayers regularly and I know that all those prayers will keep me going.

 “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at a time of challenge and cotroversy.”

-Dr. Martin Luther King