Writing this down will hopefully help me to stop panicking. I am still going through this process, so I will update as I go. Maybe this can help someone else to calm down, too.
Here goes.
I, a white, 33-year-old with fair skin, green eyes and not many freckles or moles, noticed a new mole appear out of nowhere at the beginning of this year. It was unlike any other mole I have in that it was very dark and growing outwards from the skin on the right of my ribcage in a dome shape. It continued to grow so, in April, I went to my doctor, who measured it at 3mm across and sent me away reassured.
It grew and grew, both outwards and across, and then by November it started to look ulcerated and inflamed, and was burningly painful. It changed colour to black, brown and red, and had a ring of red around it on the surrounding skin. It was also peeling and bleeding. I went back to the doctors last Friday, and he measured it at 8mm across and put me straight on the NHS skin cancer 2-week pathway. This was the mole a week ago:
Although the mole is pretty symmetrical, it has the following red flag features:
‘Ugly Duckling’ sign: it is unlike my other moles/freckles
New: it appeared out of nowhere in adulthood
Evolved: it has grown and changed size (doubled in size, actually) shape, colour AND texture fairly rapidly
Diameter: it is larger than 6mm
Colour: it has changed from uniform brown to black, brown and red
It is also bleeding, crusting and very sore on and off. As I’m writing this, a week later, it looks like this:
The dermatologist evaluated my case in a remote meeting (I didn’t need to attend) on Tuesday, then I was booked in with teledermatology on Thursday afternoon.
Here’s the kicker; I was told I would be biopsied on Thursday and that the dermatologist would review my pictures immediately, but when I got there they said they were understaffed and overstretched and that’s not how they do it anymore regardless of urgency.
As far as I understand, the consultant will be reviewing my pictures on Monday and then either calling me in for a biopsy or writing to me.
My teledermatology appointment took all of five minutes. The nurse stood me in front of a light with my t-shirt rolled up and a black screen behind me, and took a couple of photos. She then took out a dermascope, which looked like a camera on a stick with a magnifying glass and a light, and placed it over the mole (which hurt). She did the same thing again with ultrasound gel on the mole. Voila.
The problem is, I’m chronically anxious and bipolar. I have absolutely no chill, medically speaking. I have been unique in that I go to the doctors a lot because I’m a nervous wreck, but I’ve also had a LOT of intense medical experiences. I had meningitis at 23 and was hospitalised for a week. I randomly got rhabdomyolysis one time despite the fact that I literally don’t exercise and my CK levels shot to over 12,000. Hospitalised for a week. After I gave birth, I got life-threatening sepsis and, you guessed it, got hospitalised for a week. I also have severe Hashimoto’s disease, which is essentially autoimmune hypothyroidism, and I take thyroxine every day to keep my body from systematically destroying my thyroid. I get migraines too, but the type of migraine I get most actually stem from a neurological condition called hemiplegic migraines that literally present like strokes. And because I’m anxious and bipolar, getting doctors to listen to a word I say is regularly a total nightmare.
The mole of doom, ironically, is the most avoidant/nonchalant I’ve been about a medical issue in a long time, and it’s the one thing I’ve presented to my long-suffering doctor that was actually taken very seriously immediately.
So, please keep checking back if you want to follow this journey of mine – I’ll update whenever something new happens. And please do comment if you’ve experienced anything similar. I’m more than a little stressed right now.
Update: Monday 15th December 2025
So, because I’ve got limited capacity for self-soothing (to be fair I have spent all weekend furiously crocheting a headband and a scarf to keep the anxiety at bay) I called the hospital today to ask for an update. It was my understanding that a letter = everything is fine and a phone call = doom. The lady on the phone, however, told me I would shortly be receiving a letter with a face-to-face consultant appointment followed by a biopsy on the same day. She said it would be within two weeks – once again, I was under the illusion that this timeframe meant that everything was fine, until she told me that that was actually an urgent referral. This is also backed up by the MacMillan melanoma referral guidelines on their website:
Urgently refer (appointment within two weeks) if:
- a person presents with a suspicious pigmented skin lesion that has a weighted seven-point checklist score of three or more
- OR a dermoscopy suggests malignant melanoma of the skin.
Consider urgent referral (appointment within two weeks) for melanoma in people with a pigmented or non-pigmented skin lesion that suggests nodular melanoma.
Love this for me! So now to go back to the waiting game. I’d better buy some more yarn.
The Station 
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