hawkdawg

Hi there.  I meant that the hospital was telling us that the apparent delay in getting results was not related to the likelihood of SN involvement.  But SN involvement of course remains critical to next steps, staging, etc.

Anyway, we did call the hospital again yesterday afternoon.  They called back this morning, and the nurse of my wife's doctor asked what we were calling about.  We told her that we wondered when we might hear the results of the pathology examination. She told us to hold, then came back on to say it had come back just this morning—negative for melanoma in the margins, and negative for melanoma in the all nodes!!  NO further treatment recommended, but we'll be meeting iwth an oncologist anyway, for a tutorial that might help us going forward, then for scar revision surgery back with the original surgeon, then begin an accelerated program of skin inspection well into the future.

We are grateful for these results, of course, but also very grateful to those who took the time to answer our questions.  Thank you to everybody, and we hope we can somehow share our good luck with you all!!

Thanks, but I don't think Clark level is predictive any more. From what I can tell from the studies, Breslow depth and mitotic rate, possibly ulcerization, tumor location and age have value.  It's interesting that the younger you are the greater the likelihood of SN positivity. And head and neck tumors are slihtly LESS likely to spread to the SN than tumors elsewhere.    Besides, when I plugged in her numbers to this nonagram, no matter what Clark level I used (since my biopsy did not measure it), the highest number I could come up with was 8%.  I don't think that is right–too low.  Seems from what I can tell a range of 10 to 30% is more realistic.  Those numbers aren't bad, but it's a roll of the dice we don't want to lose, for sure…