Toby ~~~ A belated Happy Birthday greeting! Sounds like you had a grand time at the surprise party ... :-)
Last week I was scheduled to have one mole removed from my leg. When the doc came in to mark it, on the spur of the moment he decided to also do a punch biopsy on another one nearby.
The lab report has come back and the second one ... the punch biopsy rather than the full excision ... was classified as "moderate to severe atypical." On the scale that is used, the next step beyond 'severe atypical' is melanoma.
I go in Thursday to have the area fully excised (to you in Rio Linda, that means cut out ... LOL!) to make sure that all the atypical cells are removed.
The reason that I am praising God is that if the doctor had not had that last minute impulse to take a look at the second one, I would probably not have gone back for another skin check-up for a year ... and would probably have had full-fledged melanoma by then.
I've had it once before ... 32 years ago.
..... Please, all of you, if you notice a mole changing or any peculiar places on your skin, get to a doctor NOW. If melanoma is caught early, it's removed simply (generally in a doctor's office as mine have been) and is over ... gone ... kaput. But if it has a chance to metastasize ... i.e., get into your blood stream or lymph system, often the result is that it is fatal within a year.
I did and came out like Jessie James, mopped up.