It turns out the visante OCT scan is more like taking digital pictures of the eyeball but it also shows some depth. Quite painless and quick. We walked back to Dr. Opth’s office in the building next door with printouts of the scans.

The point of this was to try to determine if the bump went below the surface … not a good thing. Fortunately, it appeared to be just a surface bump. However, Dr. Opth is still fairly sure it’s melanoma. He’s so sure that he printed out an article about conjunctival melanoma from Wills Eye in Philadelphia, apparently the nation’s specialists in eye cancers. In addition, he contacted them and said their recommendation is surgery, too.

Dr. Opth tells me he wants to do the surgery soon … in the next couple of weeks. He also wants to perform the normal follow-up procedures during the surgery since he has such a strong belief in the fact that it’s melanoma. This entails cryotherapy (freezing) and a pure alcohol wash or rub or something. It was getting hard to follow everything at this point!

I have to admit that my finances are taking up more of my thoughts than the melanoma at this point. Sounds weird but you have to know that I’ve only had maybe one cold in the last ten years. My good health and optimistic outlook resulted in a health insurance policy with a $5,000 deductible. Yeah, $5,000! Plus, when you factor in that I’m self-employed and being unable to work means no income, it’s definitely going to leap to the forefront of my thoughts.

Dr. Opth’s assistant and I were working on scheduling the surgery. Between my work schedule and the availability of surgical facilities, we were looking at about 3 weeks out. However, Dr. Opth overhears this and says no, he wants this done within 2 weeks. Okay, fine. My surgery is scheduled for 7:15am on 10/6/08.