Background: I was diagnosed with a melanoma in situ at age 18 (I'm 31 now) and have had many biopsies of atypical moles since, with all coming back mild to moderately atypical. None were particularly concerning to me, but my doc would point them out and opt to biopsy because of my history.
A little over a week ago I was doing a skin check and noticed a small, very dark spot on my back. I reached back and tried to scratch it, thinking maybe it was a tick (it's getting to be that time of year here), but it wasn't. The rest of my moles are a medium brown color, so it really stood out. I pulled up a picture of my back from a few months prior, and the spot wasn't there in the picture. Luckily, I already had my annual skin check scheduled for the next day. My doctor assured me it didn't look problematic, but since it concerned me and I couldn't watch it closely with it being on my back, she removed it.
I got a call a few days later from the nurse saying, "It's not cancer, but we want to re-excise. Your doctor can't see you for a month, so we're going to get you in with someone else." I said I was fine waiting for my doctor and preferred to see her, but they insisted I not wait that long. Which, of course, worried me, so I requested my pathology report. Results are as follows:
Diagnosis: junctional dysplastic nevus with severe atypia
Comment: H+E stained sections show a small highly atypical junctional melanocytic neoplasm with an increase in bridging of large, hyperchromatic junctional melanocytes with an increase in single cell melanocytes. The MITF immunostain shows a central focus of pagetoid spread. The neoplasm is not broad in nature and is not identified at margin, however, complete re-excision with a margin of normal skin is recommended.
So this just means that's it's just an atypical mole and that after re-excision there's nothing to worry about, right?
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