Skin cancer after radiotherapy. What to look out for.

Radiotherapy can occasionally cause skin cancer … yey!

Today, I am having another part of my body removed. Thanks cancer, the gift that keeps on giving.

This pesky little mole has grown in the last 2 years, since I finished radiotherapy. My dermatologist isn’t happy with it. It’s developed raggedy edges and a clear, raised lump in the middle.

She thinks it’s probably pre cancerous. Or possibly cancerous. She thinks it’s probably as a result of having 5 weeks of radiotherapy to this area of my body.

We will never know for sure.

But the irony of radiotherapy is that as much as it is a life saving cure for cancer, it’s also a carcinogenic treatment.

So it looks like part of the cure for my breast cancer has caused skin cancer.

Yippeee!

So in typical Steph style, in advance of being forced out of action by another medical procedure, I’ve been taking the opportunity to smash myself in the gym.

It makes me feel good. It helps me process. It makes me feel alive. Sweating it out makes me feel like me.

How do I feel about it? Weirdly, I feel more pissed off about this than about having had breast cancer. I am done in with doctors and tests and procedures. Walking into a doctor’s surgery these days is highly triggering.

A word I hate, but I can’t think of a better one.

I don’t want to go. I don’t want another part of me removed. I don’t want to have to worry about cancer any more.

But I have to.

On the one hand, I feel the best, fittest and healthiest I’ve been in the last decade. Life looks good! I’m happy. On the other, there’s this niggling little worry. What if … ?

It never quite goes away, does it?