Been wondering whether to share this with you all or not. It sometimes takes me a while to settle into a forum and whether I feel like I fit in or have enough to say. Everyone here has been really welcoming and I hope you feel the same way about me. I wasn't technically invited here and only came cause I have been reading Cordia's blog.

Anyways, now that I've been saying I'm a bit drug addled I feel comfortable enough sharing why. Not looking for sympathy or anything, just wanting to explain if my posts get either a) confusing or b) I start suffering from foot in mouth disease.

About 6 weeks ago I went to my GP to have a mole looked at and he removed it for me as he didn't like the fact it had changed. Unfortunately it came back as melanoma. It was quite a thick one, can't remember specifics at the moment but it was in danger zone for thickness. It was either a stage 2 or 3 melanoma and was classified as medium. I alos discovered I had a 15%-20% chance that it could have spread to my lymph nodes.

This was all a bit of a shock to me as I am only 24 and although I have had sunburns in the past, I am very careful about going into the sun as I burn easy. I don't like to go out in the sun too much for this reason and I never go out to try and tan or anything like that.

As New Zealand is a high rish skin cancer country, it is normal procedure for when a melanome is removed to go in and take an extra centimetre from around the site as a safety margin to prevent it from reoccuring in the same place. I was then faced with this horrible dilema of going private or public ($6000 vs free) I rang the cancer society and the cancer nurse said 3 weeks won't make a difference so I have had a 3 week wait to get this all sorted.

This morning I had to go in for a lymph node scan. This entails having four injections into the site of my scar where the melanoma was with radioactive dye. This dye then spread through my body and it shows the camera which lymph nodes it would likely go to if my melanoma had spread.

Now lucky me, the dye didn't spread straight away so at 8:30 I had to take a half hour walk to help it spread. The clinic is in the posh part of town with rush hour traffic and I had to walk and swing my arms and raise them up and down as much as possible in order to help the dye spread. I was a right sight! Although I did manage to make it my mission to embarrass my husband as much as possible!! Hehe!

The scan showed that there were 3 possible locations it could have spread to. One on my clavical at the front, and two on the back of my head in the lower right hand quandrant.

I then went into hospital and got there about 10. At 12:30 I had the operation. This involved putting me under general anasthetic and removing the excess from around the site. I t also involved going into each lymph node section which was identified and removing a sample for biposy. While he was there I also got him to remove and extra mole on my right jaw line as it was very raised and I kept catching it on things.

I didn't wake up until 3:30 and had a bit of morphine for pain control as it was quite sore. The first time I had a mole removed I was told it would be uncomfortable but paracetamol would relieve it... unfortunately it didn't and I spent a good 2 hours crying in front of my classroom while trying to teac. That's teachers for ya! I didn't want to leave them in the middle of a lesson so I worked round it.Lucky for me I have a great class and although they were concerned about why I was upset I simply told them I was in a bit of pain but I'd be fine and they jsut simply carried on with it.

So now I have at least till Wednesday off. i am expecting my pain levels to go up quite a bit so they have given me Tramadol which will make me drug addled again. I also have to wait until next Wednesday (1st December) To find out if the cancer has spread and what the next step will be. I also have a fantastic boys undercut on the lower right of my head where they had to go in HAHAH my hairdresser is going to be mortified lol.

So that's where I am at. I dunno I just felt like I wanted to let you all knwo and I hope I haven't over stepped my place here or have shared too much. I just felt that sharing was the right thing to do :)

I'm really enjoying my time here. I'm loving everyone here and it's been so easy to settle right in :)
So thankyou and thank you in advance for the distraction  from my pain