Wendy’s story – “I didn’t think I’d ever get skin cancer.”

Wendy’s jour­ney began in August 2020, when her hus­band noticed a ​‘weird’ mole on her left shoul­der, and sug­gest­ed she book into MoleMap. ​“I had a Full Body MoleMap in Sep­tem­ber and fol­low­ing my appoint­ment, I received a rec­om­men­da­tion to come back in three months for a fur­ther check,” she says. ​“I went back in Feb­ru­ary 2021 and was advised to urgent­ly remove the mole as it had changed. The Melanog­ra­ph­er was fan­tas­tic – she rang me out­side of busi­ness hours and said that she thought I should get it done straight away.”

Wendy’s GP removed the mole in a 10-minute pro­ce­dure using a local anaes­thet­ic. A week lat­er, when she returned to have her stitch­es removed, the news wasn’t good. ​“My GP said, ​“I have results and the diag­no­sis is pos­i­tive melanoma….” He then went on to describe what would hap­pen next, but I nev­er heard him — I went blank, bare­ly digest­ing the news. My GP wrote a detailed email out­lin­ing every­thing so I could read every­thing lat­er with my hus­band, which helped a lot.”

One of the things Wendy real­ly appre­ci­at­ed was hav­ing a pho­to­graph­ic record of her skin to refer to (stan­dard with every Full Body Mole Check and MoleMap Skin Check+). ​“All of my spe­cial­ists have used it to com­pare whether my moles have changed,” she says. Some peo­ple think a Full Body MoleMap is cost­ly, but every sin­gle spe­cial­ist has said that hav­ing that point of ref­er­ence is invalu­able – you can’t put a price on that.”

6 things Wendy learned that might be help­ful for any­one else going through a melanoma diagnosis:

1. All news is good news and there is help if you get it ear­ly. Be brave and keep going!
2. Take some­one with you to lis­ten in appoint­ments and ask questions.
3. Don’t con­sult Dr Google! If you do, ask your med­ical team for real­i­ty. Ask lots of questions!
4. It is okay to feel over­whelmed. Try writ­ing a diary of events — it helped me to ​‘not think’ about it as I had it writ­ten down.
5. Talk to your sup­port peeps, it helped me heaps!
6. Be grate­ful for the lit­tle things.

My melanoma team is fair­ly pos­i­tive that we have found this ear­ly,” says Wendy. ​“They believe the best plan is to remove the melanomas alto­geth­er and then I will be reg­u­lar­ly mon­i­tored going for­ward. There is a risk of the melanoma return­ing or appear­ing else­where. Things have changed in my life and we are adjust­ing, and we will move for­ward once we know what the plan is.”

“I try not to dwell on it too much but some­times I found myself tear­ful or blank, but then I am back on track again. I was told this is nor­mal and it’s all part of get­ting your head around it all. The mil­lion thoughts that pop in and out of your head can be over­whelm­ing and the best thing I found was to talk to some­one and share those thoughts.”

“I encour­age every­one to self-check your skin and your family’s and friends’ skin too, and if any­thing looks dif­fer­ent or you are unsure, then please get it checked,” Wendy stress­es. ​“Go see your GP, visit skin cancer clinics like MoleMap to consult a skin specialist.t. It doesn’t take long at all. One of the things that my team say all the time is ​“if we get this ear­ly, there are pos­i­tive results with pos­i­tive outcomes.”

“I’m so very lucky to have great peo­ple sup­port­ing me 100%: they lis­ten, they hug, they laugh, they cry, they under­stand and they are there all the time! And I mean all the time, these peo­ple are awe­some, and I am thank­ful to each and every one!“

“This is just a part of my sto­ry, an ongo­ing sto­ry with more chap­ters to add,” she says. ​“I know I’ll be okay, my wound will heal and my scar will fade, but I will be for­ev­er check­ing my skin and I hope you do too! Fin­gers crossed always … be good to your­selves and take care out there.” ♥

Thank you so much Wendy for shar­ing your sto­ry. And a reminder to any­one who has a mole or spot that is new, chang­ing or sim­ply looks ​‘weird’, don’t chance it — get it skin check or mole check by experts as soon as pos­si­ble. It may turn out to be noth­ing to wor­ry about … or you may have caught it in the nick of time.