I Am Surviving Skin Cancer

My GP sent me to the Royal Melbourne Hospital the day I showed him a sore on my shoulder that was bothering me. I'd tried all kinds of over-the-counter creams and lotions on it but nothing had seemed to help. I thought it might be a pimple that I had scratched and had become infected but over about a year or so it just kept getting worse and it was making a bloody mess of all my clothes. It did not hurt but the constant itch made me think it could even be an an insect bite. I live in the inner northern suburbs, just a short tram ride away from the Royal Melbourne Hospital and I walked into the emergency dept. on the same day that I first showed the sore to my local GP. The RMH is a major treatment centre in Melbourne, Australia and my doc. told me not to waste any time in getting there. The hospital took a specimen for testing to confirm what the sore actually was and they gave me an appointment date and time for a return visit to receive the test result. On my return visit about a week later medical staff said to me it was a basal carcinoma. They told me the sore would not heal itself and would continue to get worse over time. The only effective remedy was to cut it out. I accepted the earliest date for surgery that I was offered. It bothered me a little bit to go under the knife with such a short lead time but the thought that the growth may spread if I waited too long bothered me even more. They explained to me that as a day-patient I would be given a local anaesthetic and sedated, then the growth would be surgically removed and some skin taken from another part of my body would be stapled into the wound to help it to heal and I would be discharged and free to go home on the same day. Before I knew it my day-surgery had turned into a six day admission episode with people questioning me as to why I had not brought my mobile phone and usual medication with me when I came into hospital. I had to explain to the nursing staff that I had prepared to stay for only one single day. The whole episode had an eerie ad hoc sensation about it. I was not the only person who did not know what to expect from one day to the next. Even on my last day the arrangements for the provision of after care and daily dressing of my two surgical wounds were uncertain since I live alone and have no one who can help me with this. The nursing staff told me that they had arranged for the local district nursing service to visit me on the day after I was discharged and dress the wounds, but no body came. I was discharged on a Sunday which probably made it difficult for RMH to contact the local district nursing service on my behalf. In spite of my having a strange feeling about the way the treatment episode developed over that week I am informed that the surgery was successful and that the growth is unlikely to return. All's well that ends well.