The Story of Ignoring What I Thought Was a Mole for 2 Years: My Melanoma Experience Part 1

I was 45 years old when I was diagnosed with malignant melanoma.

I believe it was an early detection.

Even so, I had left it alone for nearly two years.

Back then, I was constantly searching for things like:

"Mole suddenly appeared"

"Malignant melanoma early stage"

"Melanoma images"

That was all I searched for.

It started at a public bath.

My water heater broke,
so I couldn't use the bath at home,
and I ended up going to a local public bath until the repairs were finished.

Public baths are a bit special.

Since I was there, I washed my body more thoroughly than usual.

That was when it happened.

I found a small black dot on the inside of my left thigh.

It looked like a dot made by the tip of a ballpoint pen.

It wasn't even 1 millimeter.

At first, I thought it was dirt.

I scrubbed it hard.

But it wouldn't come off.

Oh well.

That was how I felt about it.

A year passed since then.

The black dot had grown just a little bit.

About 2 millimeters.

That was when I started searching again.

Malignant melanoma.

Melanoma.

It sounded like a scary disease.

Apparently, it's hard to distinguish from a mole.

The more I looked into it, the more anxious I became.

Around that time, I often saw theABCDE rule.

Asymmetry.

Border irregularity.

Color variation.

Diameter.

Evolving.

These are the features to watch out for.

However, my mole was different.

It was small.

It was symmetrical.

The shape was neat.

The borders were clear.

If I had to say anything,

it was just that it was growing little by little.

So,

I guess it's fine.

That's what I ended up thinking.


And then more time passed.

Two years later.

Before I knew it, it had reached about 4 millimeters.

Even so, it looked like a normal mole to me.

I convinced myself that in my case, it must be benign,
searching for evidence that it wasn't malignant
and trying to believe it.

But, I was still worried.

The fact that it appeared suddenly.

The fact that it grew little by little.

Perhaps those were small signs from my body.

In the next post,

I will write about the day I was told it was malignant melanoma.
(I plan to include actual photos in the next article)