After a negative lap for endo, I spent a week at a great diagnostic center in the US seeing tons of doctors for my pelvic pain. But, on my first day there, an internist during a thorough physical noticed a mole on my abdomen and immediately said woah you need to get that biopsied and removed. Note, lots of docs have seen this abdomen and nobody has said a peep! The derm, who looked about my age, did NOT think it needed to come out and actually asked me what I wanted to do, but since the orders from the higher up Internist were clearly to take it out and I was kind of like do whatever, I've already got scars from the lap, she did. So on the second to last day there, I'm talking to the Internist about how the trip basically gave me no answers, Internist remembers the pathology report that we're waiting for on the mole and calls the lab, she looks at me while holding the phone and says, "here's why you came." Turned out to be a severe atypia - which is a pre-melanoma. So I had it re-excised the next day and another one excised that had looked similar (it too came back moderate atypia). While this isn't a sure thing that you're going to have it turn into melanoma, they seemed pretty sure and gave me stern warnings that I'm forever at a higher risk and should be checked thoroughly every 6 months.
I always figured if I came out of a surgical procedure room with a 3 inch scar under one breast and a 1 inch scar under the other that I'd be rocking a kickin' new bod, but I guess that's not always the case! So, despite all the magazine articles I'd read on melanoma and what to watch for -- here's the one I missed -- if all the moles on your body (and I don't have many) are one color family and then you have a one or two that are much darker or different colored TAKE NOTE! Go see a derm. Hope that helps somebody.
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