Received an email this morning from Dr. Onc … my MRI is normal! Yea!

This afternoon I had my combination follow-up and pre-op appointment with Dr. Opth. I received the paperwork I need to take with me to the hospital and we talked about what he would do during this next surgery.

After he checked out my eye with his machines, he called in his associate to also take a look. They both talked about how clear the eye looks and that there’s no sign of any melanoma. Unfortunately, we all know the pathology results disagree. So it seems the question of the day is “what do you cut out when there’s no visible signs?” Well, that’s for Dr. Opth to determine.

I learned something new today … or rather, something was clarified. I thought the other sample Dr. Opth had taken during the last surgery was from the white toward the inside of my eye (toward my nose) and that’s what had also come back with pre-cancerous cells. However, it turns out the 2nd sample was also on the outside portion of my eye. Apparently the “skin” is too thin on the inside to take a sample.

Dr. Opth did a really good demonstration of the last surgery versus what he’s going to do this time. If you’d like to play along, grab a kleenex. Now fold the kleenex in half and lay it down on a hard surface, like a table. The kleenex represents the “tissue” layer of the eyeball, which is fairly thin and soft. The table represents the sclera, or base, which is a hard layer of the eyeball.

During the first surgery, he cut out a piece of the tissue and then did cryotherapy (freezing) around the cut edges of the tissue. The biopsy results show that the cancerous cells went right to the edge of the cut out tissue plus were also seen below on the sclera (aka table). During this next surgery, Dr. Opth will cut out more tissue and then freeze the remaining edges PLUS the sclera (which he didn’t do last time). It’s this extra freezing of the sclera that is going to be more problematic during recovery. He says my eye will bleed more (since I didn’t see it bleeding, I’m assuming that means during surgery) and that my eye will hurt quite a bit more since freezing the sclera is considered extreme. I know he’s following the recommendation of the specialist at Wills Eye.

I asked Dr. Opth if there was any way to get “material” for a biopsy without surgery and he told me no. As I suspected, but I had to ask. I was hoping simply because we won’t know for sure if all the pre-cancerous cells are gone after this surgery. It would take another surgery to get another biopsy to know. Sigh.

I mentioned the fact that I created this blog and it was the first big smile I’ve gotten out of him. So the blog’s a success even if no one ever reads it! ha! But he said that my type of melanoma is so rare that it’s unlikely there’s a support group or anything to help someone, so it may be helpful. Who knows?