The results of the lymph node biopsy were delivered by Mr W in a pre-arranged meeting at the Bath Clinic about three weeks after the SLNB and WLE operations. Kathy came with me. The hope was that the lymph nodes that they had taken out of my groin were clear of cancer cells under microscopic examination. If they were then we had caught it before the melanoma had started to travel around the body which is when things started getting really serious – as if the current process was deemed too fun and light-hearted. Given the depth of the initial mole, I was already stage 2 but the statistics associated with that stage were pretty decent. With clear SLNB results, the operation that I had in Bristol three weeks earlier would be the last of my treatments and apart from the three monthly checks, I would be all done.

The results weren’t good.

My heart sank……yet again.

They had taken four lymph nodes out of my left groin during the SLNB procedure and three of them had contained cancer cells. I was now at stage 3. The highest stage for melanoma is 4 which means it has spread to other organs in your body and is effectively terminal. Stage 3 was not good news. Again, my initial reaction was very calm and unfazed by the news. I straight away kicked in to finding out what that meant with regards to the next stage of treatments and overall prognosis. Kathy was affected a little more by it than I was but she was getting used to dealing with news we didn’t want. The good news that Mr W made us aware of was that whilst three nodes contained cancer cells, they contained very little. Two of the nodes had contained what was effectively a single cell and the third had contained a collection that was only 0.6mm in size. Obviously that kind of size is tiny, but a build-up of cancer cells of any size is not a good thing.

The medical opinion regarding SLNB results is mixed. Some experts don’t believe in the SLNB procedure at all as they feel it gives a false diagnosis. They say that if the amount of cancer cells present in the lymph nodes are so few as to not show up on any of the main scans I had done and only appear when every cell is looked at under a microscope then the lymph nodes would have done their job and overcome them. Personally, why would you want to leave that to chance? If you know you have cancer cells inside you then get them out before they can do any more damage in my view.

Regardless of the views about SLNB procedures, according to the facts I was now stage 3 melanoma which, if you’ll excuse my language, has pretty crap statistics associated with it. Around 50% of people with stage 3 melanoma live 5 years or more, which obviously means that around 50% won’t. Around 35% of people with stage 3 melanoma will live 10 years or more. Around 65% won’t.

It’s a really strange thing having to deal with these statistics and I’ve not really got my head around it even now. Loads of people say that statistics are just a generalisation and as everyone is different, there’s nothing to say that you will be affected the same as others. I fully understand that and can easily find myself agreeing with it. However, the flip side of that is that statistics are a record of fact and as an average it actually means that for every person who lives longer than the statistics show, some poor bugger needs to offset that by coming in on the wrong side of the stats. I also fully understand that these statistics are out of date the minute they’re released. These stats are recorded by following people for 5 or 10 years after their diagnosis and treatment. Therefore, each statistic shows not the current survival rates but the survival rates for people who were treated with medicine and procedures 5 or 10 years old. Advances with a lot of medicine, especially melanoma treatment is moving at such a rate that there are processes in place today that weren’t even practiced a few years ago. 5 and 10 year survival rates for melanoma based on todays treatment are expected to be considerably better than those from 5 and 10 years ago. Through an online melanoma group that I’m part of, I now know people who have been stage 3 for 20 years and even stage 4 for 10+ years so I’m certainly hoping and planning to be around for quite a while yet. It may well be that everything is now dealt with altogether and I never have another interaction with melanoma at all but whatever the situation ends up being, it’s still difficult to look at statistics that are so severe and short term. I had always just expected to grow old enough to see my children become adults and even start their own family, as most people expect and luckily, as most people get to experience. That’s still the plan but with the statistics associated with my condition, there is now a cloud over that expectation. However, on the plus side and in a positive way it has really helped to focus the mind on what’s important in life.

The practical impact of the SLNB was that as the cancer had spread to some of my lymph nodes, I had to have another fairly major operation under general anaesthetic with a two or three night spell in hospital. This time I needed a full lymph node dissection of my left groin. That basically meant they would cut open the top part of my left thigh and take out all the lymph nodes in the area, along with surrounding tissue. The reasoning behind this is to make sure that any other cancer cells that may have spread to this part of the body are taken out to stop rogue cells multiplying and spreading at a later date. At the same time they were going to take out a couple of lymph nodes on the right hand side of my groin to test those as well. I can’t remember if that was standard procedure or if tests had shown something suspicious but I was relaxed enough with it. My leg modelling days were over anyway so another scar wouldn’t be a disaster.

The lymph node dissection could be done at Bath clinic which was much more convenient on a number of levels. It was only 10 minutes from home and also meant a private room, tv and a choice of decent food options at meal times. As this next procedure needed to be done fairly promptly, I was booked in for the Thursday before the Easter weekend. This was also another advantage as it turns out that the majority of procedures performed at the Bath clinic aren’t emergencies and therefore most people would not choose to have their operation over the Bank Holiday weekend. I pretty much had the place to myself, not that I was charging around the corridors or having late night parties in my room but it meant that family and friends had very few issues with visiting hours and I also had almost 3 or 4 personal nurses which was lovely.