Skin Cancer Surgeon ’s Role in Your Treatment
Sun Protection is a fact of life™
Undoubtedly, your skin cancer surgeon plays a significant role in your successful treatment. Thus, the importance of choosing the right medical professional cannot be overemphasized especially when you have been diagnosed with the deadliest skin cancer of them all malignant melanoma.
What the Doctor Does
Basically, your skin cancer surgeon performs excisional surgery, which is appropriate for any and all types of skin cancer. Your doctor will cut out the cancerous tissue along with the surrounding healthy skin.
This way, the possibility of leaving out cancerous cells hiding in the normal cells is significantly lessened.
As can be expected, if you have allowed the skin cancer to grow unabated, the excision area will be larger, too. You may even end up with parts of your face pockmarked like so many acne pits have taken up residence in it.
Fortunately, your pretty skin on the affected areas can be regained. Your surgeon will perform reconstructive surgery that usually involves skin grafts from other parts of your body into the excision site. If your doctor is good, there will be very minimal scarring.
What You Should Have Done
With that in mind, you will start thinking of the things that you should have done to avoid seeing the skin cancer surgeon in the first place.
It may be too late for you now, in a manner of speaking as skin cancer have the highest treatment rate amongst all types of cancers, but you can still do something to prevent a recurrence as well as to prevent skin cancer from afflicting your family and friends.
First, you should have provided sufficient sun protection. Although we cannot always avoid the midday sun, we can take the necessary measures to increase protection for our skin against ultraviolet radiation.
You must apply sunscreen lotion all over your body from the face down to toes and everything else in between, even those that are hidden from view.
You should wear photo-protective clothing that reflects the sun’s UV rays instead of absorbing it into your skin, thanks to special manufacturing processes.
You have to eat your antioxidant-rich fruits and vegetables as well as drink your vitamins A, C, E and D. By the way, vitamin D can be had from sun exposure, too, but make sure that it is during the early morning hours and only for 20 minutes tops.
Second, you should have been more alert to the symptoms of skin cancer. You could have visited your primary doctor when you noticed a new growth in your skin, or an existing growth has changed in appearance, color, shape and size, or a sore continues to fester despite all efforts to heal it.
If you have consulted your doctor right away, then maybe, just maybe, surgery would not have been an option for your skin cancer. You could have gotten away with topical ointments and other less invasive therapies.
Regrets always come last. But that does not necessarily mean that all hope is lost, far from it. You should work closely with your
skin cancer surgeon to ensure that your prognosis becomes better and better with each passing day.
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