I recently had a melanoma removed from my back. They preliminary cut the mole off. There was the specialist doing the op under local injection, with a student training beside him. I thought, yup she`s got to have hands on experience etc. So she assisted the specialist with the removal etc and the specialist left. So I had to have 14 stitches in my back to close it up. The student made a hash, basically after 3 days they all split open. Resulting in a big hole in my back. So antibiotics etc.
I had to have a further operation in Leeds to do another wide excision and too check whether there was any cancerous cells left in my back. There wasn`t.
I also had the offer of a Sentinel Node Biopsy. Which basically is where they inject you with a tracer to see whether the cancer has spread. I accepted, during the operation they removed 3 lymph nodes, one which was cancerous.
I`ve never been ill in my entire life until now. You always think "It`ll never happen to me" but it does.
Further check-ups for five years now, but reading this thread I got off lightly.

Anthony

Thanks for that praise, I work for cancer services in North Wales and we are under enormous pressure from the Government to try and reduce cancer waiting times, it is a lot of hard work but slowly we are starting to see some positive changes which is great news.

I would also like to add that the service which I received in St James, Leeds was beyond excellent. Everybody from the cleaners to the surgeons :luxhello:

Anthony

Staff at the neo natal unit in treliske were top notch, despite being understaffed due to cutbacks. Had problems with them in the past but could not fault them:)