Baking in the sun comes back to haunt us down the road.

[EVELYN]

Hi All

I'd appreciate all your opinions on this topic.

Tyce has to have a precancer actinic keratosis??? (I think) removed from beside his left eye. Is the best way to freeze it or have it removed surgically, in office, by a plastic surgeon??? I do realize that freezing it entails no surgery, but does that get it all? He has had a biopsy and it came back precancer.

Thanks for your suggestions......

Evelyn

 

[hensylee]

I have those things all over the place - I was raised in Miami. Mother was raised in Key West and she had them, too. They say they don't know what causes them - well, DUH. SUN!

I have had a number of them removed, all via freezing, except one that I knew was cancer because it was black, purple - very colorful. He cut that one out.

The skin dr told me 'if it's brown, it's not cancer' if it's black or colorful get it checked as cancer; he froze all the others.

 

[barbwil]

Hi Evelyn,
My husband has had many of these frozen, the same one several times. A couple of months ago the dermatologist gave us a prescription for Aldara cream to put on the area several times a week. (We had done this before on one on his temple and each day I gave it a little nudge with a cu-tip and eventually I was able to get it off and there was nice, new skin there.) But this time it was on the top of his head and it grew to a 1 inch plus circumference and 1/4 inch in height. When we went back the doc was pretty taken back by the looks of it and sent us to a plastic surgeon. So 3 weeks ago hubby had outpatient surgery and had a piece of the skin from his thigh grafted on. It is healing nicely; his thigh still looks like a slab of raw meat!
So many times the freezing as a first line of treatment has worked but this time it didn't and we had to go to the second attempt and then resort to the plastic surgery. It was a squamous cell ca; the pathology report came back saying he got it all, the edges were clean.
The worst worry was taking him off his warfarin for 5 days.

Hope all goes well whatever route you chose to go.

 

[EVELYN]

Thanks, all

I think we've decided to go with the freezing; no bleeding/sutures and if that does it, all the better.

Thanks.

Evelyn

 

[bvdr]

Evelyn, I've had both the freezing and the surgical removal of AK (actinic keratoses) as well as the chemo-cream twice. When I had the Squamous Cell cancer on my lip, also from sun exposure, I had Mohs surgery but the surgeon couldn't get clean margins because of extensive AK that wasn't even visable to the naked eye. My Mohs surgeon did it for me while I was still on warfarin and didn't make a big deal out of it but warned me of perhaps more bleeding and bruising. I didn't have too much of either even though he had to rebuild my upper lip and do some complicated restructuring. He does these things everyday and the results were far better than I expected. Some areas such as near the eyes or on the red part of the lip shouldn't have the chemo cream used on them anyway. I think you all have made a good choice.