My son had a grinder wheel hit his index finger joint. Two stitches at hospital, over $18K? NSFW

[Ms. Toad]

65. Sarcoma is much more aggressive -

I'm two years out, and the risk is just now low enough that I can go 6 months between scans. (Until the two year mark it is a physical exam and a CT scan of the lungs to check for metastasis every 3 months.) The kidney-bean-sized tumor required a 5" diameter excision to make sure there weren't any locally migrating cancer cells. The normal survival rate is somewhere around 50% at 5 years. Mine was caught very early, so I should have much better odds. But if the jerk of a doctor I initially saw had had his way, I would not have known to watch it carefully enough to catch it as early as I did. (The standard for evaluating a bump to determine if it is a sarcoma is that it is golf-ball sized.)

The initial lesion, 6 years earlier, was pre-cancerous lesion masquerading as a dermatofibroma (completely harmless). It was a nightmare getting the doctor (a dermatologist) to pay attention to me. It had all the ABCDEs of cancer. He point blank refused to biopsy it. When I insisted (and pointed out that my brother had just been diagnosed with a melanoma, which his doctor had initially refused to biopsy) he agreed to biopsy it. But instead of doing a simple punch biopsy (as is the norm at this institution) he required me to make an appointment on another day for the biopsy. Pretty sure he thought having to come back would discourage me and I'd give up. After the pathology report came back with some odd characteristics, he point blank refused to ask the pathologist for more clarification. I had to make an appointment with the pathologist to get my questions answered. Turns out it had 3 of the 4 characteristics which indicate it should be treated as pre-cancerous rather than benign. So I watched it carefully. It regrew and was excised (by my regular dermatologist) at least 3 more times before the sarcoma showed up.