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Vulvar melanoma is the second most common vulvar cancer, a melanoma of the mucosal skin of the vulva in older women that is usually found late and has a poorer outlook than skin melanoma. It is removed with a margin, staged like skin melanoma by thickness, and treated when advanced with the immunotherapy and, for the quarter with a BRAF or KIT mutation, the targeted drugs used for other melanomas. Below, week by week, is what OnCo's record of Vulvar melanoma says about the first two months: the order is typical, the timing is yours to ask about. Sections appear only where the record has something to say. Orientation, not medical advice.
Staging tests establish exactly what and where the cancer is. Everything else follows from the answers.
Ask which of these were tested and what the results were; see the report reader for what each value means.
These specialties appear in the standard of care for this cancer. In most centres they meet weekly as a tumour board to agree each plan; you can ask when yours was discussed and what was decided.
A second opinion from a centre that treats many similar cases is normal, not rude; the standard of care tells you what to compare it against.
Each row is a setting from the standard of care, in the order it usually arises. Not all will apply to you; your stage and biomarkers decide which do. The guideline grade, where recorded, says how strong the evidence is.
Wide local excision by thickness with sentinel node biopsy; systemic therapy as on the mucosal melanoma page: checkpoint inhibitors, BRAF and MEK inhibitors for BRAF V600, imatinib for KIT.
Generated from this cancer's standard of care, biomarkers and open problems. Take the group that matches where you are. To tick, add your own and print, open the one-page appointment sheet.
Much of what helps in the first weeks is free if you know to ask: testing, helplines, rides and lodging, second opinions, trial travel.