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Son in law unfortunately has melanoma. Doctors in California had not been aggressive enough in one of his surgeries and later told him it was too far for more surgery to be effective. He switched to doctors at the Huntsman Center in Utah that have made progress with surgery and some newer drugs. He’s doing better though the side effects have taken a toll. We’re just glad he’s had a couple more years and there’s hope he’ll be able to survive.

“Dermatologists are scarce as hen’s teeth. It can take months to get in to see one.”

That’s a pity for you, where I live there are multiple Dermatologists and they are fairly easy to see.

One my Wife dislikse immensely so she no longer sees him, she does see a very nice female Dermatologist every six months or so for her melanoma followups...four years on and so far so good.

We are thankful.

A Hen's tooth here... Melanoma can be insidious as in this source article, allegedly an enlarging bump that lacked any of the irregular coloration classically associated with it. Such cases are less than 5% of melanoma, and happily for our malpractice carriers, often have features suggestive of basal cell carcinoma or other things we're still inclined to biopsy. Many more melanomas have features that a layperson educated on the subject could flag as suspicious enough to show us directly or at least show their family doctor who might biopsy it himself or at least could get folks in to see us quicker. The overall cure rate of melanoma climbed to 90%, before the recent wave of potentially effective drugs for it, mainly by getting patients and doctors more aware of it. Internet has plenty of resources to help you learn for what you should be looking. Check them out then try to look yourself over every month or two. In addition to the specific features described online be on the look for lesions that change over a couple months time. Especially if you have some risk factors, like being fair complected, having many or unusual moles, or having a family history of melanoma. Running marathons is a recognized risk factor. Some may be worth having their spots followed, by at least their family doctors and in some cases by us. Early diagnosis gives excellent cure rates.

Later diagnosis may offer a worse prognosis, but isn't without hope. Melanoma has long known to have the highest rate of all cancers of what could be interpreted as miraculous outcomes: widespread disease either completely disappearing or becoming indolent. Enough that we've long been trying to learn from them how He did it. After decades of study, new drugs are starting to let us induce miracles.