As soon as I saw it I knew it was going to be a problem, or at least a minor inconvenience.  The lump was on the upper outside portion of my left wrist, just shy of my hand.  I could pinch it and move it around.  It was both on the skin and in it, but it wasn’t attached to the bone.

I would sometimes mess with it- poking, proding, squeezing… Just trying to get as much information about it as I could. I think the lump appeared sometime after my annual dermatologist visit, where I get my skin looked at to head off possible issues due to my light eyes, fair skin, and previous sun exposures.

I kept my eye on the wrist thing until my next skin appointment rolled around in late August of last year.  

When the doctor started the visit off by asking if I had any spots of concern, I showed her my wrist.  She took a look at it, squeezed, pushed and manipulated the lump.  Her guess was that it was scar tissue from a bug bite and most likely harmless.  But just to make sure, she wanted to scrape part of it off and send it to the lab.

I knew this was coming.  Even though I’m sometimes squeamish about medical stuff, I was ready and willing to have this thing addressed.

So she cut the top off the thing and sent it away.  A few days later, the dermatologist’s office called to tell me that the lump was a harmless, smooth muscle growth called a leiomyoma.  It was fine, but I should really come in and have the rest of the thing cut out and examined, just in case there was something more nefarious hiding on the underside.

Cut out? And everything was most likely fine anyway?  

I wasn’t really into that.  The procedure/surgery would require no swimming or working out for 2 weeks until the stitches came out. I asked if I could wait a few weeks until the swimming season was over.  They said sure.

I made an appointment for October.  But as that time approached, I began to realize again how inconvenient the timing was.  I was preparing to run a half marathon in mid November and couldn’t afford to miss 2 weeks of training at this point, as the post surgery protocol required.  So I called the office again, explained the situation, and asked if I would be doing myself a major disservice by rescheduling to mid December.  They said it would be fine.

So I made an appointment for the middle of the holiday season.  As a musician, that’s without question the busiest and most tiring time of the year.  I love it, but it does tend to run the personal battery down pretty low.  With no brain space left to deal with the possible problems of holding a trumpet for several hours a day on a sliced up wrist, I called the dermatologist office again and said I would reschedule in January.

When the new year rolled around, I had mostly moved on from the wrist lump.  I knew I should go have the rest of it cut out, but I just didn’t do it.

Near the end of the month, I got a registered (or certified?) letter from the dermatologist’s office, basically stating that I had an unusual growth on my wrist that needed treatment, and that they had told me a few times to come in and get it taken care of.  If I did not, and anything bad happened, they were not responsible for it.

I knew the letter was mostly sent to protect them from malpractice accusations, but I’m glad they sent it.  For some reason, that letter moved me to stop screwing around with this thing and get it done.

So about a week later I went nervously into the skin surgeon’s office and got the rest of the lump removed.  As the doctor was cutting, I was surprised that he was working an area several centimeters longer than I expected.  That seemed like a bad sign.

But all things considered, it went well and I spent the next two weeks managing around with a inconveniently located incision on my dominant, left wrist.  When I went back to the office two weeks later to get the stitches out, I had hoped the whole thing would be over.

But it wasn’t.

The doctor told me that the bottom portion of my lump had a tail, which the lab labeled as a leiomyosarcoma, which is cancer.  He said it was good that we caught it early and that everything should be good from here.  

But there was one exception.  Because the thing turned out to be cancerous, the doctor was not satisfied with the margins he had cut around the growth.  He wanted to cut again, just to make sure the margins were what they should be.  But first we had to wait four weeks to allow the incision to heal more fully.

I waited to hear what next steps or treatments there would be and what my prognosis was.  But other than coming in again to touch up the margins, the doctor said nothing was needed. I felt better having heard that, and after checking out of the office, headed to the car.

But by the time I got there, I had a few questions that I wish would have popped up while I was still in the office.  I know Googling your medical symptoms is often a bad idea, but the temptation was too much for me.  I pulled out my phone and searched “leiomyosarcoma”.

The web told me that what I had was a very aggressive cancer that is difficult to treat, with a 5 year survival rate of about 65%.  I started feeling hot all over when I read that, despite realizing that something must be off.  Certainly the doctor would have told me if we were in it that deep!  

A few minutes later I realized what I was missing.  My leiomyosarcoma was cutaneous- in the skin.  I had omitted that word from the search.  When I added it, the picture got a lot better.  My type of growth was described as a non-aggressive, slow growing cancer with an excellent prognosis and a survival rate of 98%.

I felt better, but the damage had already been done to my sense of calm.  I wanted to know everything I could about what this thing was. I suppose I could have called the doctor’s office and tried to grill them with my questions, but instead I searched online and found several research/medical papers on cutaneous leiomyosarcoma and read them.  It was tough reading, but I did expand my vocabulary and I think I now have a decent understanding of the situation.  

Still, I had about a dozen questions that I wanted ask the doctor at our next visit.  That was four weeks away- at surgery number 2. I showed up to that appointment more calm than last time, and determined get this damn thing taken care of for good.  I also had my questions ready.

As he finished the procedure, the doctor patted me on the shoulder, saying, “Good job.  Everything went well. The nurse will finish up with you.”  

Then he left.  I was in a state of mental distraction during the surgery, and didn’t snap out of it quick enough to ask him about my concerns.  So the nurse finished up, and dismissed me with an appointment to come back in two more weeks to get the stitches out.

Well, my questions would have to wait until then.

After a two week rerun of the “Limited Left Hand Ability” show, I was back in the office one more time for suture removal, and another chance to talk to the doctor.  This time, I asked him the main things that were on my mind. How do we know the growth didn’t spread beyond the skin?  What are the chances it comes back? And so on..

He was very confident that it would not return, and saw no reason to suspect that any new ones were in the pipeline.  I asked him specifically if it was, statistically speaking, a done deal- time to move on with my life.  He said yes.

Of course, those were the words I wanted to hear, especially delivered with conviction as they were.  But here we are now, almost a month later, and I still feel a little shaken by the situation.

I need to get my mental and physical energy going fully in the right direction again. To help that happen, I’ve been eating better, working back into my full exercise routine, and have lost 10 unnecessary pounds. Hopefully this incident is like a pothole, seen far behind me in the rearview mirror as I keep moving down life’s road.

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