so just HOW bad is melanoma?

My mom is a few weeks out from surgery and she seems to be getting better and better everyday. She still struggles to get around just because she still can't bend her ankle because of the graft, but she is finally able to hop around without crutches! She also got all of her stitches removed from her groin and thigh area. She meets with an oncologist sometime within the next week to discuss and figure out what her treatments are gonna be. We all know she is going to have to go through some sort of chemotherapy and/or radiation. The thing my mom is most worried about is losing her hair, which I think is ludicrous. There is a good possibility that she is going to be fighting for her life, and all she is worried abut is losing her hair?! I guess that can be looked at in a somewhat positive way- all she has to worry about is being a bald lady for a while.

This is her thigh and groin area, where her stitches
were and where her lymph nodes were.

This is what her skin graft looks like today. Still grosses me out.

So, after talking about melanoma, let's figure out how bad it really is. Cancer.net is a website that speaks of melanoma and its survival rates, among other things. "This year an estimated 76,380 adults (46,870 men and 29,510 women) in the United States will be diagnosed with melanoma of the skin. Melanoma is the fifth most common cancer among men and the seventh most common cancer in women. Before age 50, more women are diagnosed with melanoma than men. However, by age 65, the rate is more than 2 times higher in men. By age 80, the rate in men is nearly 3 times higher than in women. Melanoma accounts for about 1% of all skin cancers diagnosed in the United States, but it causes most of the skin cancer deaths. It is estimated that 10,130 deaths (6,750 men and 3,380 women) from melanoma will occur this year. The number of people diagnosed with melanoma has risen sharply over the past 3 decades." Kinda scary huh? The site says the survival rate of someone whose melanoma was located only in the site where it was initially found, is 98%. If the cancer has spread to the lymph nodes, 63%, and if it has spread to other parts of the body, 17%. Now that's really scary. Of course all of this depends on the location, thickness, depth, and many more things. Disease Management gives an abundance of things that factor into survival rate and prognosis of melanoma, here are their top factors:

• Thickness of lesion
• Presence or absence of ulceration
• Number of lymph nodes involved
• Size of lymph nodes
• Presence or absence of distant metastasis

The main factor that I believe affects people diagnosed with melanoma would be their outlook on the situation. You could go through all the treatments in the world and have the best doctors and oncologists taking care of you, but if you don't have a good outlook or perspective of the situation, then what do you have?