Posts by cosmicjackal4

Does anyone here have any experience dealing with malignant melanoma? It was discovered back in June or July in my father. He had surgery on his back, where they ended up removing everything right down to the muscle. By November, we found metastases under his left armpit, so on December 9th, they went in and removed 14 lymph nodes. He seemed to be recovering okay, the wound was healing up nicely, but while we were busy wrestling with getting a PET CT scheduled—which has been a nightmare since we're dealing with things over in Canada—we got news on January 7th that there’s a new metastatic spot under the left armpit. They aren't even sure if it's a leftover from the last surgery, despite insisting they cleared out everything that needed clearing, or if it's something entirely new... and then there are two more appearing under the right armpit. He has a consultation tomorrow, and they’ll likely operate again this Tuesday or Wednesday. We're going to get him started on Zelboraf. So, this marks his third surgery since June of 2014. Please, I have to ask, is this all happening too fast? Does this mean we should be bracing ourselves for organ involvement within a month? Is it even possible to beat this? I can't stop gripping my head and crying; these dark thoughts are just suffocating me. My only real question is, will my father live long enough to see me walk across that stage at my graduation, holding my diploma in my hands? I can't believe I'm even thinking like this; I always just assumed it was natural, that my parents would grow old and eventually see their grandchildren... but now I'm stuck questioning how much time is left, and for how long we can actually live with this hanging over us. Again, if anyone has experience with melanoma and how quickly this progresses, please, reach out...

Richard Sanders7 said:Maybe ask the doctor if your dad might be a candidate for an Opdivo + Yervoy clinical trial.

They’ve only really brought up Zelboraf to us, but apparently he has to undergo DNA testing first just to see if he actually has the specific mutation that the drug targets, right? Since we're over here in Canada, they haven't even mentioned anything like that to us... which makes me wonder, does anyone here actually have any experience dealing with this kind of thing?

Angela Wright said:It’s pretty grim, honestly—we’re looking at a particularly aggressive strain of cancer that just doesn't seem to care about chemotherapy. It’s one of those situations where the chemo hits it and nothing happens, which is terrifying to think about. Because of that, the treatment options have been narrowed down significantly, mostly leaving surgery as the primary way forward. At this stage, the only real glimmer of hope lies with the patients who haven't seen the disease spread to other parts of the body yet; if it hasn't metastasized, they actually have a decent prognosis, but otherwise, the outlook is heavy.
Survival and how you fight back against this disease... it’s such an incredibly individual thing, isn't it? You can look up all the averages you want on the internet, but those numbers are just abstractions, really. They don't account for the person sitting right in front of you. There are people out there who basically live one study at a time, jumping from one clinical trial to the next, just trying to stay ahead of the curve. I actually remember reading about this famous American journalist who managed to navigate it all that way—he essentially lived off the progress of new research and ended up gaining another thirteen years of life because of it. It makes you wonder, doesn't it? How much of it comes down to the science, and how much is just that stubborn, unpredictable human element?
Well, there's nothing left to do but take it one day at a time and just deal with whatever situation decides to show up on my doorstep next. You can't exactly see what's coming around the corner, can you? And honestly, maybe it’s better that way—maybe we aren't actually supposed to know what's ahead.

Yeah, exactly... just taking it one day at a time, I guess. We'll just have to see what tomorrow decides to throw our way, won't we?

So, they finally sat him down today and told him that starting next week, he’s kicking off some kind of combined therapy—radiation mixed with something else, I think. We're also working on boosting his immune system, which is just one more thing on the endless to-do list. Honestly, thank God this isn't what we're dealing with permanently, but I suppose you can't fight reality, right? As Charles Darwin once said...

It’s funny how people always talk about strength or being the smartest person in the room like those are the things that actually matter in the end, isn't it? But if you really sit back and look at how the world works, you realize that neither the strongest nor the brightest necessarily come out on top... it's always just the ones who can pivot and adapt when everything starts shifting around them.

Good evening, everyone... If someone had told me years ago that I’d end up posting on a forum like this, I probably wouldn't have believed them, but I guess it's just more proof that nothing in this life is ever really certain, is it? Anyway, I won't drag this out too much, but I wanted to try and share what we're going through with all of you, hoping maybe someone here has walked a similar path or might have some kind of useful advice to offer. Back at the end of July 2014, my father was diagnosed with malignant melanoma. Honestly, I don't have all the medical reports right here in front of me to give you every single precise detail, but I'll try to be as specific as I can. Right after his appointment with the dermatologist, he went straight into surgery that very same day; they removed everything down to the muscle in the spot where the mole used to be. About seven days later, the pathology report came back, and it said it was nodular melanoma, 5mm thick, with vertical growth... T4b... He seemed to recover just fine after the initial surgery, only for us to find out in early December that they had to remove all the lymph nodes under his left armpit... specifically 14 of them, three of which were positive, "infected" by those cells...
He’s seeing the oncologist tomorrow to get more detailed information... consultations and all that sort of thing.
After that first surgery in July, the whole family just refused to accept the reality that this was something "serious"... I mean, okay, it happened, it's been surgically removed, and that's that, right? We even overhauled our entire lifestyle—healthier eating, less stress, taking it easy, spending more time outdoors... he actually looked great, he even put on some weight. So, when this discovery hit in December, it was a massive shock, at least for me. I started digging into melanoma research and saw people calling it the "silent killer," which felt like the perfect answer to my own question: how can someone look so healthy while something like this is hiding inside them, completely invisible to the naked eye?

My question is, does anyone here have personal experience with this disease, and what are the typical prognoses? After these lymph nodes come back positive, does something worse inevitably follow, or can things be stopped right here? And is it true that for patients in this situation, the maximum prognosis is often cited as five-year survival?

Sorry again for being so long-winded... I haven't had a chance to catch up on the previous posts yet, but I want to wish all of you the very best. I hope things get easier for you and your families. Best regards. 🙂