An anticipated cancer diagnosis will cause severe anxiety. Convinced you have cancer, you schedule an appointment with a doctor. The conviction isn’t based on hypochondria. It’s based on symptoms that can only mean cancer. Nothing other than cancer explains the symptom. Upon discovering the symptom, you are now quaking with anxiety. In America, one out of two men, and one out of three women, will get cancer.
The doctor can’t see you for several days. You can’t sleep. You shake. All you can think about is cancer. I recently had a cancer scare; I was convinced I had melanoma (deadliest form of skin cancer), but another part of me kept hoping it was just a side effect from rubbing Retin A on my skin (for a benign condition). I didn’t know how I was going to even wait in the doctor’s office without shaking. I was sure that the change in a mole meant melanoma.
What ELSE causes a mole to change? Melanoma! For years we’ve heard that a classic sign of melanoma is a mole that changes. I googled Retin A fade mole and only one link came up about a study in which Retin A faded a certain kind of mole. This got my hopes up that Retin A was causing the top layer of the mole on my face to disintegrate into thin air over a period of just days.
I called the dermatologist’s office (who prescribed the Retin A) and was informed that Retin A does NOT fade moles !
Oh God, it’s cancer.
My heart pounded. The adrenaline was pumping nonstop. I had no appetite. The shakes returned. Several days prior, I had discovered that the mole had lost some of its top portion. Over the next five days, the top portion of the mole disappeared into thin air, until on the fifth day, all of the mole’s next layer was exposed.
I finally decided to accept the fact that I had melanoma.
“I have melanoma,” I kept thinking to myself. “It’s finally happened. Childhood sun exposure has caught up to me. I have cancer.” I imagined the doctor telling me in her office, “Looks like melanoma.”
After I ruminated like this for a short while, the shakes disappeared and the adrenaline stopped surging. I actually felt calmer. By no longer leaving open the possibility that it was the Retin A, I freed myself of the anticipated shock of hearing a cancer diagnosis. By expecting a cancer diagnosis, I no longer felt fearful enough to start shaking.
If you hold onto the possibility that it’s NOT cancer, this will create overwhelming anxiety, because it sets you up (with your full knowledge) for a shocking cancer diagnosis — shocking because you kept clinging to the hope it was a benign condition.
But by resigning to the idea that it IS cancer, you then can no longer be shocked by hearing a cancer diagnosis. The anxiety won’t disappear, but it will considerably dissipate. Maybe this won’t work for everyone, but it worked for me.
Now some people will think that a sure way to get cancer is to convince yourself you have cancer. This is baloney. Nobody gets cancer by thinking they have it.
“I have melanoma,” I kept thinking. In fact, having already “accepted” a melanoma diagnosis, my thoughts then moved on to anticipating what details (as far as cancer stage) I’d hear from the nurse when she called back with the biopsy results.
By telling myself I had cancer truly relieved some anxiety and pretty much eliminated the shakes. By the time I stepped foot in the dermatology center, I was smooth and poised; nobody could have ever detected I was a nervous wreck.
Before I tell you the conclusion of this story, you should know that media descriptions of melanoma symptoms always describe a “changing” mole as a warning sign. My mole had gotten smaller and lighter because the top layer came off. This was definitely a changing mole.
We’re taught to believe that a melanoma gets bigger, not smaller. This gave me a little hope, until googling mole smaller took me to a site that said when a mole gets smaller and/or lighter over a period of just a few weeks, this can mean melanoma. I had also stumbled upon a site that said a sign of melanoma is when “the top layer of a mole peels off.” I nearly fainted.
Oddly, the fifth day after noticing the changing mole, the mole stopped changing. The next layer was not showing any signs of coming off. The remaining portion of the mole looked perfectly normal. But still…what ELSE could have caused the top layer to peel off? Melanoma…
I was very calm in the doctor’s office, and I even told her, “I’ve already diagnosed it as melanoma.” I was calm, cool and collected, rather than shaking like a leaf.
Thirty minutes later, the entire mole was removed (about a 7-8 minute procedure), and as I walked to my car, I re-enacted the doctor’s precise words: “I am 99.9 percent sure it is not melanoma.” And, “I’d be SHOCKED if it was melanoma.” The look on her face was unforgettable as she recited those words: a nice smile and warm glowing eyes. The doctor’s exam included viewing the mole through a magnifying glass and saying it looked normal.
She told me a changing mole doesn’t always mean melanoma, but the media plays this up because melanoma ALWAYS means a changing mole. She said benign causes can make the top layer of a mole come off, or “flake off,” as she said. The doctor told me that it’s not uncommon for the hair follicle (s) inside a mole (in a mole that has a hair or two sticking out of it) to become irritated, and this causes the top layer to flake off. Now why didn’t I think of that?! My mole had a hair growing out of it! Of course!
Two days later I got a call from the nurse. Her voice was cheerful and perky. She told me the biopsy said it was BENIGN, and, “It’s just a mole.”
If you have a changing mole…you decide how best to ruminate. But I will recommend this: GET IT REMOVED AT ONCE. Some people have a mole only scraped for a biopsy sample. This delays treatment if it turns out to be melanoma. If a mole is changing, make an appointment immediately with a dermatologist. My doctor said, “The patients who do poorly with melanoma wait a year before coming in.”
