keeping on the sunny side

This morning was my appointment with a gynecology oncologist and I'll spare you the intimate details but will at least say that things are good! The doctor found nothing unusual and ruled out the possibility of a pelvic primary melanoma. This is fantastic news!

The general consensus among my care team is that the primary was indeed the mole I removed myself off the middle of my back in February of 2020, and we can now say with certainty that there are no tumors in my organs, lymph nodes, or brain. So although I still have metastatic melanoma (likely stage IIIc and not stage IV like they feared in the beginning), I am so very lucky that it resides only on my back in my 7-ish silver-dollar-sized tumors.

I've been doing a lot of reading about metastatic melanoma mostly out of curiosity -- how is it I have had some tumors for over a year and the cancer still has not spread to organs or glands? I was curious about the timeline of melanoma metastasis and I found several articles from the 2008-2012 era. It's worth mentioning the incredible advancements science and medicine have made since then. Obviously, being diagnosed with metastatic melanoma is not a great thing, but I am so thankful for the progress that has been made before now. Being able to make data-backed decisions about my treatment makes me confident that I am well armed for this fight.

In other fantastic news, I received a letter from my health insurance stating that my treatment plan of Ipilimumab and Nivolumab has been approved! Meaning that I can proceed quickly and not waste valuable energy worrying about how much all this will cost me. I will state the very obvious fact that I am tremendously lucky and privileged to be in this situation with truly as much help as possible (and that also means you, dear reader, who probably has sent me good healing vibes in the last month! that has helped immensely and I can't thank you enough).

All that's left to do now is to start treatment and kick cancer's ass completely!