It shouldn't have happened to my mam (Skin Cancer in General)

Member Name: wearsidelass

Product:	Skin Cancer in General
Date:	09/07/04 (79 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: No advantages in having this disease

Disadvantages: Nasty scars after surgery

I thought I would like to share my experience of skin cancer with readers. I wrote this review on another site but feel so strongly about the subject that I had to post it here too. Events began in January 2004 and are as shown below:

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JANUARY 2004:
Last night because I was in a bit of a state. I telephone "me mam" every night - she will be 84 years of age on 1 February and I love her dearly. I didn't ring her on Monday (she lives in the North East and I am in Dorset)because I was tired - had a hard day at work and thought "I'll ring her tomorrow, as usual".

So, last night, about half an hour before I was due to go to Slimming World I rang me mam.

"Hello mam, sorry I didn't ring you last night but I was tired (etc). How are you mam? "

"I've got cancer".

"What! What do you mean you've got cancer!?"

"Got a letter from the hospital this morning and they say I have basal cell carcinoma but that it's not life threatening".

At this point I am in such a state of shock. Me mam has cancer, this can't be so. Not me mam. Not MY MAM. But yes, she tells me she has. She was very matter of fact about it but I guess she had had all day to think about it.

"You know you tell me that you look up on your computer about things well, can you look it up?"

"Of course mam. How do you spell it? Are you sure it's cancer and not just another name?"

"This is how it is written .... basal cell carcinoma".

By God, carcinoma, yes, yes, that's cancer alright. Oh no! She really has got it. She really has.

I looked it up on the internet and really didn't want to, saw photos and skimmed through it. It is a skin cancer and most people who get it have been sun worshippers.

Sun worshippers? Not me mam. Definitely not me mam. Me m
am had TB just before I was born and the doctor told her she must never sunbathe. To this day, me mam has never sunbathed, would never sit out in the sun. We were always told that the doctor said no, she can't stay out in the sun. So how does an 84 year old woman who has never sunbathed get skin cancer? I will tell you.

Me mam has a mobile hairdresser. She is a very nice hairdresser and does do quite a lot for me mam. I like her hairdresser. Me mam wanted a perm and the hairdresser duly did it but some of the perm solution fell down onto me mam's brow. It burnt her brow. She had a nasty scar for a while but then it cleared up and it looked quite silvery.

When me mam went in December to see the consultant for her check up on her hip operation, the consultant was more worried about the scar on her head and arranged for her to have a test done. She had this done 3 weeks ago under a local anaesthetic and had a couple of stitches put in. The stitches were taken out a week ago.

Then yesterday, the results of the test arrived.

To have this happen to me mam is awful. This is the woman who has looked after me, went without for me and loved me, no matter what. When I passed for grammar school me mam couldn't really afford to let me go but she did. "We'll find the money somehow". I went to grammar. When I finished grammar and wanted to go to college to learn to be a secretary we really couldn't afford it but mam said "we'll find the money for your books somehow" and she did. When I really, really, wanted the college scarf she found the money. She always did her best for all of us. When I had my two children, she would knit and crochet for them, buy them things, help me to buy things for them, she always found the money, even though she had little herself. She looked after them while I went to work and she would always babysit when I asked. She always gave to others. Me mam is a very, very kind pe
rson and I don't know what I would do if she wasn't there.

I need to be strong for her and stop the tears that have kept falling down from my eyes in the last few hours. I have to do that for her because she has always been strong for me.

What I can't really believe is that a hospital - who knows that an 84 years old woman lives on her own - can just pop a letter in the post, so "matter of factly" and tell her she has cancer - yes, they say it is not life threatening - but cancer is cancer. It is the dreaded word. How can they do this? Surely, they should have got the doctor or district nurse to call in and explain it all to her. They shouldn't have let her know like this. I am so, so angry.

I find it so hard to believe that me mam has this form of skin cancer through no fault of her own. Not from sunbathing but from a bloody perm! I read on the internet that contamination with chemicals can cause skin cancer. So you people out there who have perms, please be ever so careful in future. Don't let your hairdresser let the perm solution fall onto your skin - see what can happen. The hairdresser might well argue that it wasn't the perm solution that caused it. But, me mam didn't have that burn on her forehead before she had that perm. Part of me feels sorry for the hairdresser because she is not in good health herself and she didn't do it deliberately - it was an accident. What has happened has happened and I now need to think positive and move forward and see what that stupid, bloody hospital is going to do about it.

Whatever happens, I will be strong for me mam and I will be there for her, as she has been for us.

I now have to tell my sister in Canada but I am going to wait until Friday evening when she has finished work.

I don't want to go into detail about basal cell carcinoma because I haven't fully investigated it yet but I will be - all I know is that 90% of pa
tients are cured and I will make damn sure that me mam is going to be in that percentage.

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22 June 2004

For all of you who have so kindly asked about me mam and her operation, I can now give you an account of the details as I have just returned to Dorset after nursing mam for a couple of weeks.

I arrived in Sunderland on 9 June and both mam and myself were really pleased to see each other and we quickly had a cup of tea and a stotty cake and then taxi ordered and down the town for a shopping spree.

10 June arrived and mam was really nervous although she tried not to show it but, at 84 years old and going into the day case unit for a skin cancer operation, was traumatic for her but she did feel more at ease with me being by her side. Taxi ordered and off we go only to arrive half an hour early. Found a porter who organised a wheelchair for mam and then he showed us where the Day Case Unit was situated. We had to sit in the waiting room until the Reception opened (although there was a clerk behind the counter). 8am and the Reception opened and I got up and gave her mam's details and we were told to wait in the lounge. Just after 9am mam was called but they wouldn't allow me to go with her, I had to wait in the lounge. I felt dreadful as I had promised her I would stay with her, even walking down to the operating theatre with her but now the hospital would not allow me to do so. Curse, curse, and more curses went through my mind.

I eventually had to go outside for some fresh air, just hate the smell of hospitals and the nurse had come out and told me that mam wasn't going into surgery until 11.30 so I should go and have some refreshment. I went for a little walk, had a cup of coffee in the good old trusted WRVS cafe which was actually very pleasant, then went back to the waiting lounge.

Nurse came out at 12.30 and said mam had had her operation and was recuperating. She had been given
a local anaesthetic and sedated and was doing well. She would be ready to go home in a couple of hours.

Three hours later the doors opened and a nurse came walking through with me mam by her side. I gasped in horror. I had expected the surgeon to cut about an extra 2-3 mm of the tissue surrounding the skin cancer but me mam had a horrible, nasty, bloody 3.5 inches scar across her head, about 0.75 inches wide in parts and a mark in the centre of the wound similar (as mam later said) to the mark of Zorro - a nasty looking Z in the middle of the scar and stitches. I was completely horrified at what this surgeon had done to me mam. How could he do this to an 84 years old woman? Couldn't he cut in a better style? I quickly had to hide my horror because me mam looked like a frightened little mouse who needed quick reassurance that everything would be alright. She had been to the toilet and looked in the mirror and had been frightened so much by what she saw.

Don't these surgeons realise that some 84 years old women still take a great pride in their looks and appearance?

I was absolutely disgusted that me mam had been allowed to walk out of the hospital after just coming out of surgery. She went in a wheelchair and had to walk out. Luckily, attached to the lounge was a nice conservatory where we waited until the taxi arrived. I spent the rest of the day reassuring me mam that the scar would heal, that it wouldn't look so bloody and that it would be OK.

Got up the next morning and had to totally withhold my horror at me mam's face. Her face was covered in blood. The wound was covered in a mass of soft congealing blood. She looked as if she had been in a war zone. I spent 20 minutes gently cleaning the blood from her face then immediately rang the hospital as I was so angry at the state of me mam's face. I told the hospital in no uncertain terms what I thought and they told me to take mam back. Mam refused to go back
there. I had to demand that she came with me to get sorted out, that her face shouldn't be streaming with blood from this wound. She eventually relented and off we went but I could totally understand why she didn't want to go back there.

We arrived and 3 different levels of nurses looked at mam's head until eventually a sister came to look at it. She said it was OK. OK? I said. How can it be OK - surely a wound shouldn't be leaking blood like this?

Eventually, after looking a mam's notes and speaking to mam, the sister realised that the wound wasn't healing because mam takes an aspiring to thin her blood due to her heart problem. Problem solved as to why the bleeding was occurred but wouldn't you think they should have known this? Mam took in all her medication - they should had read this and her notes! The sister gave me some surgical gloves and a tube of eye ointment (yes, eye ointment) to put on the wound which was to keep the skin supple and it also had antibacterial properties in it to combat infection. They gave me a supply of sterile pressure pads to apply to the wound when it was bleeding and said it would just take longer for her blood to congeal because of the aspirin. But she had to take the aspirin because otherwise she could have another problem with her heart. Vicious circle.

For 3-4 days I had to keep cleaning the blood from mam's face but eventually it did stop. 6 days after her surgery she had to go back to Outpatients Dept to have the stitches removed. Mam was sick of people saying that she looked as if she had had a nasty fall and, in the end, we just agreed.

The nurse looked at mam and said "that's a lot of stitches". I said I thought there were probably about 25 stitches. As the nurse was cleaning the wound and taking the stitches out, I asked her how many the surgeon had put on the outside (there were dissolvable internal stitches too) and she said she didn'
t know because it wasn't recorded on mam's records! I always thought they had to thoroughly check that the same number of stitches were removed as was put in! My faith in the NHS was rapidly diminishing by the minute.

Mam was pleased to have her wound cleaned up and stitches out but it still looked horrible and bloody in parts. The sister said it would take a few weeks before it would fade.

During my two weeks with mam I did all I could for her to make her comfortable and all the necessary jobs around the house. A couple of weeks prior to her op she had a chair lift installed and the bathroom had been converted for a disabled person so I knew that life wouldn't be as difficult for her as it had been.

The day to return to Dorset came and mam wasn't very well that morning but we both knew it was because I was returning to my family. However, mam is a very resilient lady and she told me that she would be OK, after all, my two brothers still live near her and help out.

I can't describe how I felt leaving her because she still looked fragile. But, I have spoken to her at least twice a day since Friday and she seems in good spirits.

She has to have her check up on 6 July and my sister in law is taking her to the Outpatients Dept so we will know at that time if the operation was a total success. I hope it has been because I know that mam would definitely refuse to have another operation. She has been frightened by wxhat they have done and she wouldn't subject herself to any more damage on her face. I know she would think "what will be, will be".

Here's hoping that the operation is a success.

7 JULY 2004
Mam saw the consultant yesterday who was pleased with her progress and told her she would be monitored for another 2 years and that he wanted to see her in 4 months time which, happily coincides with my next vist. He did state that he wasn't sure if they had remove
d all the skin cancer as it has roots and he doesn't know if all the root had been removed. If there is still some left then it will appear on the surface of the skin again within the two years.

I was sickened by this news. She has a nasty big scar now and I had hoped they had removed all the cancer and yet there is still some doubt. I feel sick inside but mam seems OK with this. We will just have to wait an see. Let's hope they got it all out first time.

Will keep you updated.

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