foo on patrol wrote: ↑Thu Jun 13, 2024 8:34 am
Surgery was done on Tuesday but the outcome is unknown yet. Before the Dr started he informed me that I stand a good chance of lossing my ear in the future due to the nature of the cance and being on my ear.
That was a real downer for me, so I'm hoping that he got all of it plus a margin.
Seeing as this is the 2nd lot on my ear, he has taken a wede out and then foled it back down onto the previous section that was cut out so that it looks like a normal ear but one that will appear lower than my left one, so fingers crossed. It took the two Dr's over an hour to cut out and sew back up the arm and ear with them working on the arm and ear. The one working on my arm I had to stop because I could feel him slicing into my arm and that feeling of cutting yourself open with a sharpe knife is not a nice feeling.
Foo
Plastics teams, as opposed to GPs generally, have many more options working on the ear (with a GA, of course!), depending on the nature of the cancer, if it is localised or spread and the position. Simple lesions, as I have had, all that is needed is EMLA cream for 3 hours then local injections and you feel nothing. I was never told I would lose my ear prior to surgery on it — they had the work down pat.
Grafts are usually the best way of treating SCCs. I had an invasive SCC removed from right ear in September 2022. The cancer, found during a cursory inspection, had been unchecked and unknown for about 18 months, ulcerated and widely diffuse, requiring post-surgical 2x4cm radiotherapy (every day for a month) after a third (or triangle) removed from the middle helix, then a graft-over, donor site on right side clavical area. (as I requested, I have a full set of the photographs of peri-op, during surgery (donor and grafting) and recovery where the ear bled out freely — waaaay too gruesome to post anywhere!!).Result of all that was a slightly wonky ear (I was worried if they take too much off I would have nowhere to hook my reading glasses!
), and fully curative. In September 2023 I had a right hand dorsal graft to get rid of an ulcerated SCC plus embedded growth; that graft too was successful, but has left me with altered sensitivity and feeling in 3 fingers. While they had me under, they got 5 others off my back, two off my left arm (one scc there was 35mm in diameter and 6mm deep!!), one each off medial calf of legs (cut-and-close of 8cm each), two on forehead, and one from left brow down to eyelid. Also two failed grafts on upper temple; they failed because I went cycling with my helmet on, dislodging the bolsters and allowing the grafts to move! The guys at St Vincent's in Melbourne are known for being
very thorough!..
Long story short, I have had 1200+ skin cancer procedures since 2007 — the very nature of sun exposure
and as a bicycle tourist in the 1980s and early-1990s, plus the menace of immunosuppressive therapy for a 48 year old kidney transplant = 21x basefold risk increase.
I think you'll be honky-tonk, but wouldn't get back into stressful, physical activity for a while. Going forward, I reckon a skull-cap covering the ears will come in handy if you do a lot of cycling in the hot summer months! I use one. My cycling group is littered with older fellows who have all come under the knife for skin cancer treatment, past, present and future.
All of us have been exposed to the hot sun of summer for years and years. These cancers are seeded during the late-teens to early 30s. As the DNA is damaged from persistent high exposure, so begins the appearance of the first skin cancers that often go ignored or unnoticed. By the time the "one-we-were-youngers" reach 40, it's game on and trouble beginneth.
Moral to the story, which will likely be ignored by the glisening, pumped up 20-somethings who say,
"oh, that stuff won't happen to me!", is 50+ sunscreen, ear, neck, face, hands, arms and leg protection, and minimise activity in the hottest part of the day (11 to 3). Reckon you're going to see such "annoying, cumbersom, ridiculous restrictions" taken heed of? Not on your nellie. C'est la vie.
I've been doing it for a while but most of my damage has been done in my childhood. 
