NARRATION:What symptoms did you notice before being diagnosed with cancer?

 I didn’t notice the symptoms myself. A friend of mine, who is a raving hypochondriac and has seen the doctor dozens of times because he was convinced he had melanoma and was going to die, looked at my thumb and said, “You need to see a doctor right away! I think you’ve got melanoma!!” I said, “Sure…but I think I must have slammed my thumb in a door or something. I’m not too worried about it.” Contrary to my natural instincts, I visited a nurse practitioner later in the week, and she looked at my thumb and referred me to a dermatologist, and he looked at my thumb and performed a biopsy and sent the sample to a pathologist in Oregon, and a few days later I got the call. Here are some photos so you can see what a subungual melanoma looks like:

But the news is not all bad. Although most of my right thumb is gone, I have learned to hit the space bar with my left thumb (which took 6 weeks), and have written two more books since the amputation, removal of all of the lymph nodes in my right armpit, and 9 months of chemotherapy. I reached my five-year survival milestone in May 2017, and plan to keep on writing until the end

Update December 2018: Because of the interest in this answer, I thought I should add a photo of my hand taken one year after the surgical amputation. My surgeon did an excellent job: I have received numerous complements from other doctors.

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