Melanoma on the Bottom of My Toe -- Are you kidding me ?

HaoleBoy · Regular Joined: 19 Aug 2008 Posts: 32

Gang, this is my story with melanoma (which is a short story thus far)....I had never heard of anyone getting melanoma on the bottom of a toe, before I was diagnosed....

My fight with melanoma has just begun.... and I'm still trying to come to grips with it emotionally..... I was the paragon of health for a 49 year old ex-Army officer when the biopsy of a "wart" on the bottom of my left foot's 2nd toe came back as melanoma .... Talk about being scared out of my wits..-- and I came close to packing it in about 3 times while I was in service but cancer is far worse...this is insidious and without the almost immediate closure I experienced when a tank almost ran over me (it missed me, wow, cool, carry on !).

...But with this thing, I keep thinking well, I now know what is likely to eventually kill me given mel's nasty penchant for late recurrences beyond 10 years NED, even for Stage IA folks (though they have VERY good odds)....

I left Hawaii to come back to my original home town in St Louis where my entire family/support network is located and was treated at an NCI designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, which doesn't exist in my resident state of Hawaii..... The surgeon amputated my toe and a wedge of my foot's front ball and I'm still recovering as I write this.... For the past 4 days, I've been able to hobble around without the crutches as long as I wear this boot contraption.

.... Thankfully, my sentinel lymph node biopsy was negative and there was no evidence of residual mel cells in the "specimen" that they amputated (clean margins)..... so I am now Stage IIA and NED for almost 40 days now.... but the spectre of a recurrence ticking time bomb is keeping me up at night; hopefully I can stop taking ambien to fall asleep once I put some distance between myself and my melanoma DX.....

I hope getting back on my feet and back to work helps too... I was always more of a "gym guy" than a "beach guy" in Hawaii but did go to the beach when I was younger, but was always pretty "haole looking" (white) as my local friends say .... The docs don't believe my mel is UVA exposure related ..... they also say I'm 'lucky" to have caught it when I did since most people with foot/toe mel tend to present with really thick lesions and regional/systemic metastasis ..... but I still kick myself bigtime for not picking up on my lesion earlier, but it didnt' grow out of a mole nor did it fit the ABCD criteria... Oh well, I've had plenty of time during the past 5 weeks + to read a ton of melanoma medical studies...

Sorry for an ultra-long post and thanks for giving me an outlet to vent......

God Bless and Prayes,

Haole Boy
Stage IIA

tonester · Experienced user Joined: 03 Mar 2008 Posts: 83

Man do I get the whole "sunlight" on the BOTTOM of the foot thing.

My primary site was the ball of my left foot. Crazy. Shocked

I think it's a good idea posting up your story, likely to help others relate.

Tony
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