Fighting the beast Melanoma!

I just turn 32 in March and tomorrow I go over treatment options for stage 4 Melanoma. I also want it to be known that I’m having a tough time battling my ego to post a charity for myself. But I’m going to need help financially to fight. I feel young and 100% healthy and can’t wait to kick the shit out the cancer. I’m still processing all of this and not sure what else to write. The following is the medical story timeline and it’s been a journey but the journey were about to go on is far bigger. How bad is it? Currently 17 nodules in my lungs 5 in my liver and 3 just outside of spine. I like to be realistic as well as over optimistic which can be very difficult. I have an amazing support team around me that continues to grow exponentially. My Melanoma story- In 2013 (age 24) I had a spot in the center of my back just right to the spine. My grandfather was going to get his basal cell carcinoma carved out of his nose for clear margins. I went with him because I didn’t have health insurance and thought I could have the dermatologist check it out to see if it needed to be biopsied. He immediately took it off and the nurse told me not worry because she didn’t think it was Melanoma.. Obviously it came back positive for Melanoma. The exact wording was Clark level IV Breslow depth of 3mm. I was then referred to the University of Michigan Melanoma Oncology for further evaluation. My first surgery was a lymph node mapping to see where it could have spread too and if it had spread at all. Consensus was that we “got it just in time” They injected where the biopsy was taken with radioactive dye and watched it go to both sentinel lymph nodes in each of my arm pits. The next surgery was a wide vocal excision (surgery on my back to make sure for clear margins where the primary was as well as a sentinel lymph node biopsy (removal of both main lymph nodes that branch out to the rest of the web of nodes. Both left and right armpits) My right came back positive for microscopic metastatic melanoma. Again I was told “We got it all” My next surgery was a lymph node dissection of my left side where they took 17 lymph nodes out. All coming back clear (NED) In between those surgeries they did a molecular diagnosis and found that my melanoma was BRAF+ CT Scan/Brain MRI all coming back clear. Three months pass and another round of CT/MRI All clear- NED Fast forward to Jan 2020. I find a bump in my left armpit and immediately contact the oncology department. They do a FNA and find that it is morphologically compatible with melanoma. Surgery to remove it followed with one other node that turned out to be benign but the mass I found was a reoccurrence and bigger than we thought. Full body Pet/CT scan shows two nodules in my lung that are too small to characterize . The oncology department recommended that I start TAF/MEK BRAF INHIBITOR to eliminate any chance of METS that we couldn’t see in the PET/scan. I held off to wait until my next rounds of scans (3months) to see if we could see anything. COVID-19 Pandemic ravaged the country days after that. I’m almost thankful that I wasn’t put on treatment because of covid. Anyway CT Scan on 6/26 showed 17 nodules in my lungs varying in size but too small to characterize or biopsy. It also shows 5 nodules in the liver, the biggest one being 1.5cm I immediately get an MRI of my liver. Pathology recommended biopsy. Biopsy comes back positive for Melanoma. Tomorrow I meet with my oncologist to find out the next steps. Too be continued...