It never rains but it pours

Those of you who have known me for a while will know that I have a small reddish-purply skin tag on my left forearm, which has been there for about 6-8 years. It first appeared when I'd been living in Australia for a few years and has been sitting there on my forearm ever since. Early on I got it checked out by my local GP in Sydney and they advised that it was nothing to worry about, but that I might want to get it removed one day if it got irritating, as sometimes they can catch on clothing and they bleed profusely. Of course I never got round to getting it sorted out as there were always things higher up my list when I visited my GP (including a pesky lump in my right breast!).

Fast forward a few years and things are now critical. Over the last few weeks it has been growing steadily, from the size of a lentil to about the size of a kidney bean, and it has become more red and engorged. After my last chemo it started to bleed a lot and it's been impossible to deal with ever since. I have been covering it up with large plasters, to which of course I'm allergic, so now I also have a huge ugly-looking rash all over my forearm. Last week I went to see my GP about it, as the thought of keeping it under plasters until chemo is finished was making me feel upset, and I also wanted to check that there's nothing I should worry about. She took a photo of it on her phone and sent it to a dermatologist friend of hers who advised that I should get it looked at.

So this morning we found ourselves in the Dermatology unit at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, a sister hospital of St Bart's, to finally get it seen to. (Yes, Nick, finally! You can stop nagging me about it.) We saw a lovely doctor who asked me a whole bunch of questions (How long did you live in Australia? Is there a history of skin cancer in your family? etc) and then took a look at everything. As soon as she saw it she immediately declared that she thought it was benign but that I should get it removed immediately and sent to the lab for testing. So that's what happened! After all these years it took a couple of minutes for a nurse to scrape and burn it off (after a healthy dose of local anaesthetic) and pop it in a tube to send to the lab. She was a lovely nurse and kept making jokes about how I was losing my best friend, that I'd been attached to for so many years. (Friend? Nemesis, more like!) So now I will have a small crater in my arm, kind of like a cigarette burn. Much preferable to what was there before. And I shall go back in 5 weeks for the results and to get a check up.

The Royal London Hospital

While the doctor was examining me she asked me about the obvious issues she could see on my mouth and my body. Basically I have sores all round my mouth and red spots all over my body. These have only appeared in the last couple of weeks, since my 7th round of chemo, and I just assumed they were because I was immunocompromised and that they would go away once I recovered from chemo. She agreed, but still said we could do something about them. She has taken swabs and sent those to the lab too, and given me some cream and tablets for them. She suspects mouth herpes (ah chemo, the gift that keeps on giving!) and some kind of bacteria forming the welts on my skin. It's all pretty gross, I know, but these are the realities of being immunocompromised: my body is susceptible to everything and I can't fight off any infection. So now I'm at home, very happy that the growth on my arm has been removed, once again delighted at how thorough the NHS are being about my health. I'm also hoping that I'm not in the business of collecting different types of cancer! We shall see on 11 October when I get the results.

I wanted to also add something to my last post. When I was having my heart echo test, the nurse left the sound on, so I could actually hear my own heart beating. It sounded different depending on where she placed the wand from the machine. I don't think I've ever heard my own heart beating before, so that was pretty cool!