Biologics and skin cancers

Good luck!

My surgery will be this Monday morning. The surgeon is 72, he has been doing reconstructive surgery of eyelids for 30 years, so should know what he is doing… the young doctor that was going to do it, is not approved by my insurance yet, so probably for the best, to get a more seasoned surgeon. They always retire after working on me!

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Best of luck with that one Jon - I can’t imagine it will be at all pleasant given it’s your eyelid.

Probably about as pleasant as getting punched in the face by a Prize Fighter… I will probably look like I lost the fight too! :grin:

Good luck, Poo and Jon! Jon, my supervisor at work had an eyelid surgery…not for cancer but to shorten the muscle because her eye was drooping so badly. She had to ice it for 15 minutes every hour around the clock at first. She did look like she had met up with Mohammed Ali, and it was sore. But it’s been a couple months and she’s all healed now and no visible scar. It’s interesting that she and I both had a droopy eyelid–hers was way worse than mine, but she doesn’t get the double/blurred vision at all.
Take care and let us know how it goes! And, Poo, I hope your spot is benign. I’m going to the dermatology later this month for a total skin scan. I have a spot above my knee.

All the best with it Jon, will be thinking of you.

I had a small piece removed from my lower lip nearly 20 years ago (it turned out to be inflammation, not cancer luckily) but it was done by a 70 years plus surgeon and he did an awesome job!! I think experience can not be beat when it comes to some of the smaller surgeries… I can’t imagine it having done on my eyelid though. With a bit of luck the bruising will be well gone by Christmas :slight_smile:

Thanks, I was actually hoping for a visible excuse to avoid the family reunion…

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:joy: perhaps things do happen for a reason after all!

Good luck, Jon. Myself, I’d prefer to have the old timer too. Are you going to discuss retirement plans with him? :wink:

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I will probably be conked out for most the visit! I have never met him, hope he is a nice guy.
Have to be there at 7:30 am so I can sit on those uncomfortable beds for 2 hours. You know the ones, they are hard and flat , and bend at a right angle, my lower back is screaming at me in about 15 minutes! Also, it is at the hospital, so there is always the emergency patient that bumps you from your slot, not for the surgeon, but the limited operating theaters.
I have come prepared this time, typed up all my lists of meds, and when I stopped them, list of doctors, with phone numbers, history of surgeries and procedures, I am also bringing two copies, as I always give the receptionist my only copy, then the nurse grills you when you are in your little one piece gown, with no info, because you already gave it away! Ever try to remember all the meds, all the past surgeries, and doctors names when you are having brain fog? happened to me last time!

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Best of luck - lots of positive thoughts winging their way to you.

The surgery went well, despite the hospital goofing up the times, which made the surgeon miss his morning work out… Then my Iranian nurse (she was nice) missed the vein wth the IV, and did’t test it, so when the anesthesiologist started the anestsia it pooled under my skin in my arm, causing level 9 burning pain!
The surgeon was a great guy, not a feeble 72 but looked more like 55. Hour long surgery in twighlight sleep, mostly awake, only felt the needle a couple of times when he was putting in the last stitches.
I have to wear the eye bandage until Friday, it was so painful, I wanted to rip it off this afternoon, feeling like they forgot to remove the needle poking me in the eye. Little better now, thanks to the tramadol.

My support cat.

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What warriors both of you. I hope you get some rest and the pain continues to ease with tramadol. Cyber hugs as it sure looks like it’s very sore indeed.

I rushed in here this morning, Jon, hoping we’d have a report from you. Thanks for posting. Yup, I’ll bet it’s painful!

Big hugs from me too, and give that kitty a cuddle for me.

I was thinking. (Never a good thing!) While you’re lying there, you should come up with a great war story to go with your new look.

Thanks, doing much better today, a lot less pain, I couldn’t get a sooner follow appt. until Friday at 4:30pm, but everything seems to be settling down. I guess when they put the shield directly on the eye to protect it from the scalpel and stitching needle, they scratch the surfac3 of the eye, which was causing the pain of the eyeball. Won’t get stitches out for another week, as they are concerned about biologics slowing the healing process.

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Reading all of this, I think it’s probably a good thing I’m a hypochondriac, as I seem to go around looking for these things anyway. Luckily, I’ve never been one for going out in the sun, which should help a little bit. And nobody really wants to see me on a beach these days - immobility helps to make everything go south along with middle age!

On a more serious note, around 1 in 54 people (according to the web) get malignant melanoma during their lifetime, and a third to a half of people who live to 65 or over get non-melanoma at some point (again, according to online stats). Bearing all of that in mind, these things are quite common anyway. So, while we have a handful of people here on biologics who get skin cancers, I am guessing it is rather difficult to determine from our relatively small database of people on the forum whether that would have happened anyway?

What I guess would be interesting to know is how many people who visit the forum who are on biologics who HAVEN’T had skin cancer. This is, I suppose, the same situation as the negative reports for MTX as well. Because of the nature of these things, we only hear about the bad events rather than the good ones. On the plus side, I notice there has been another report recently that says that the increased lymphoma risk associated with biologics is thought to be a false-alarm. I think that’s three I’ve seen over the past year.

In the meantime, wishing Jon a speedy recovery from the op! I couldn’t think of a worse place to have something like that - well, I can think of one, but we won’t go there!

Well in my case, I would probably get all these skin cancers anyway, because of the amount of sun exspoure. It is not that biologics give you skin cancer or NHL, it is paving the way for them to occur. Interestingly, I have a form of Non Hogkins Lymphoma also, called Waldenstrom’s Macroglobulemia, but I likely got that from all the inflamation before starting biologics, so I guess you can say biologics might have prevented it! :grimacing:

Interestingly, that’s what some of the latest articles are saying. People with RA are more prone to lymphoma than the general population, and the thinking now is that the biologics, by working on the inflammation is reducing that risk. They also seem to think that people psoriasis are more likely to get lymphoma - luckily I don’t have the psoriasis element of PsA badly at all. It occasionally flares up on my face, but it’s very minor.

Of course, that’s what the medical profession is telling us this week. Next week it will change!

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A study was done back in 2010 regarding the connection with autoimmune and inflamation with Lymphoma. My old Rheumy told me that the reason cancers are tied to biologics because they already had the seed of the cancer, by not treating the inflammation. Now with biologics there may be less cases.

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