PSA: Basal Carcinomas
Jul. 19th, 2010 08:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marydellSo, a basal carcinoma is one of the less-aggressive & less-invasive skin cancers--what my Mom, who has had one or two of them, blithely calls "the good kind of cancer." 100% of my over-70 immediate family members have had one within the last 5 years so I'm gonna go ahead and say they may be common in elderly people.
Although they apparently present in many forms, a basal carcinoma can look exactly like the scab you get after a nasty scrape. When people see it they will go "oh, what did you do?" and if you are like the elderly folks in my family you might say "oh, that? Hm. I don't remember. It's fine, though; it's mostly healed." And everyone will figure you bashed your leg or elbow, and that the scab indicates that it's healing. And if you are a little forgetful, and prone to bumps or falls--as many older folks are as well as some younger folks--it's reasonable to assume it's a scrape, and that it's healing. And everyone may forget about it.
Further--if you are diabetic, or otherwise have a condition that makes wounds take a long time to heal, your doctors may not be worried about a scab that you continue to have during multiple visits. Eventually they may get worried about it, and decide to clean it up and stitch it so it can heal properly. But if they open it surgically without knowing that it's cancer, the chances for an aggressive infection are high, because cancerous tissue does not, apparently, fight infection or heal normally or any of that stuff.
Anyway, one of my elderly loved ones is currently recovering from a series of surgeries to clean up and close up a wound that turned out to be a carcinoma. She had that darn scrape on her leg for at least a year before any of us thought much about it--maybe two. She only had the wound opened up because she was planning a knee surgery and the docs said the leg had to be healed for them to consider it, and they didn't even realize it was cancer until after the first surgery to clean & close it (and subsequent life-threatening infection--exposing cancer to the air and then closing it up again, not so healthy). If we had it to do over again, we'd insist that she get the thing biopsied after a month of not-healing. Mom had a similar one in a similar location and had a much easier time with it, partly because it was known to be cancer when they started working on it.
So I figured I'd just put this out here in case any of you have a mystery scab--on yourself or on a loved one--you're trying to decide about. Chances are it's not a carcinoma, but if it's not going away it's probably worth having it checked.
Although they apparently present in many forms, a basal carcinoma can look exactly like the scab you get after a nasty scrape. When people see it they will go "oh, what did you do?" and if you are like the elderly folks in my family you might say "oh, that? Hm. I don't remember. It's fine, though; it's mostly healed." And everyone will figure you bashed your leg or elbow, and that the scab indicates that it's healing. And if you are a little forgetful, and prone to bumps or falls--as many older folks are as well as some younger folks--it's reasonable to assume it's a scrape, and that it's healing. And everyone may forget about it.
Further--if you are diabetic, or otherwise have a condition that makes wounds take a long time to heal, your doctors may not be worried about a scab that you continue to have during multiple visits. Eventually they may get worried about it, and decide to clean it up and stitch it so it can heal properly. But if they open it surgically without knowing that it's cancer, the chances for an aggressive infection are high, because cancerous tissue does not, apparently, fight infection or heal normally or any of that stuff.
Anyway, one of my elderly loved ones is currently recovering from a series of surgeries to clean up and close up a wound that turned out to be a carcinoma. She had that darn scrape on her leg for at least a year before any of us thought much about it--maybe two. She only had the wound opened up because she was planning a knee surgery and the docs said the leg had to be healed for them to consider it, and they didn't even realize it was cancer until after the first surgery to clean & close it (and subsequent life-threatening infection--exposing cancer to the air and then closing it up again, not so healthy). If we had it to do over again, we'd insist that she get the thing biopsied after a month of not-healing. Mom had a similar one in a similar location and had a much easier time with it, partly because it was known to be cancer when they started working on it.
So I figured I'd just put this out here in case any of you have a mystery scab--on yourself or on a loved one--you're trying to decide about. Chances are it's not a carcinoma, but if it's not going away it's probably worth having it checked.
