Going through some stuff with my stepdad’s health.

Before I go into that let me just address the “stepdad” thing. I call him that, not to distance our relationship. He’s been my father figure since I was 3 (that’s 36 yrs for those counting)

The use of the term is more that “dad” has negative associations for me. But that’s a story for another time.

Back to the health stuff now. About 2 weeks ago he had a small biopsy on his nose that the dermatologist was concerned by. It’s an aggressive malignant melanoma and they needed to go back in and get a much larger biopsy since the initial one was cancer cells throughout. In other words no margins at all.

So today he had the bigger biopsy and it was much more aggressive. They took a sample about the size of a nickel. If you think that’s not big, hold a nickel up to the side of your nose near the nostrils and see how much was taken. It’s a good size 🙁

The results are on the 15th. From there we find out if they got wide enough margins, what the grade is and next steps.

Regardless of the results at least 2 more surgeries will be needed under anesthesia this time to clean up the site and then begin reconstruction.

Worst case, take an even bigger sample, test lymph nodes then likely chemo and/or radiation.

The plastic surgeon who took today’s biopsy seemed positive that it wouldn’t be the super negative result but I’m not sure if that’s just bedside manner and not being negative until needed or if it’s legit. Anyway stepdad was in good spirits when I talked to him later on. Worried of course, who wouldn’t be, but seemed to be feeling positive about things even joking about the hole in his nose.

So, as the title of this post says…now we wait. Nothing else you can do.