Hello!

[lmkerr]

I'm so glad this is here. No one that lives where I do understands what I went through. My name is Lindsey and I was diagnosed with melanoma in April of 2016 when I was 6 months pregnant with my first child. I was scared and angry! We had been living in Sunny El Paso, TX at the time as my husband was stationed there with the army. Our family was 1700 miles away and I was lost. Thankfully I had a wonderful surgeon who put me at ease. I had my WLE at the beginning of May and found out it had barely spread to a lymphnode in my armpit. At this point we were going to induce me at 38 weeks so I could have a total lymphnode dissection. My daughter decided to come on May 31st when I was only 32 weeks along. Not long after she was born I had my final surgery and found out there was no other evidence of disease. So while I was healing from a csection I was also healing from a lymphnode surgery and my daughter spent a month in the NICU. Finally she was out and we could relax for a bit. I did end up doing 4 rounds of high dose ipulimumab and after that my husband got out of the military and we are home. I do know suffer from hypophysitis and hypothyroidism but I am still NED and feel good!

Long story but boy was it worth it. We have a beautiful baby girl and I am cancer free!!!!

[Robynfine]

Love your story! It's always great to hear positive things!

[wings59 Ambassador]

Hi Lindsey,

Thank you for sharing your story!

One thing surprising to me is the possibility that pregnancy may cause melanoma.

That's not to say that the pregnancy definitively caused the melanoma as, to my understanding, there is still a lot of legwork to understand if there is a correlation.

[lmkerr in reply to wings59]

Well at the time we were living in El Paso, TX where it's sunny 300 days out of the year and no trees or shade or anything so I think it was probably me not protecting my skin before I got pregnant!