Cancer Treatment is a BEAST

**WARNING**

*Graphic Images of a Cancer Treatment Gone Wrong On This Post**

Poor Trek!

At his last doctor appointment, Trek's dermatologist discovered that he has a skin cancer spot on his arm as well as skin cancer spots all over his face.  None of them are serious right now, but over time would be so they decided to fix the problems right away.

They decided to work on his face first.  Because he had spots everywhere, it was too hard to individually treat each spot.  It would be time consuming & painful.  So they decided to do a blue light chemical peel where they put a skin cancer killing chemical on his entire face, then light it with blue light for a certain period of time.  This process would kill off & remove the top layer of his skin & start the process of removing these cancerous spots.  He would need to do this treatment a total of 3 times before complete.

These are the "before" pics.  You can see the red spots on his forehead (they are bigger) & a lot of smaller ones throughout his nose, cheeks, & chin.

Now, they told him this chemical peel would act like a typical sunburn, but boy were we surprised at HOW BAD of a sunburn it would become.

The first few hours weren't too bad.  The redness developed over about a 4 hour time period, but it was REALLY RED.

We all kind of laughed & told him it looked like a bad sunburn, but it was fine.  They told him not to go outside because the UV rays would burn it & it would be painful.  The 2nd day he woke up & noticed a little bit of blistering.  It was sore, but nothing too bad. . . until he had to drive to work.  Being outside just about killed him.  He could barely walk from his car to the door of his office without crying in pain.

On the night of Day 2, I noticed him crying in his sleep.  I don't think he knew he was, but it woke me up & I felt so bad for him.  I knew it was hurting him pretty bad, but I panicked when he actually got out of bed that 3rd morning.  His entire face was a blistery, pussy mess.  He was in so much pain he could barely move.  He refused to talk because it hurt so much.  He had so much work to do at work, he still went & actually had to lead meetings looking like this which made things worse because he'd have to explain what was happening to people so they would stop asking.

Each day it got progressively worse & worse.  He tried to shave for work & full pieces of his skin fell off his face.  The blisters/boils would pop & puss, then resurface over & over again.

Trek was supposed to go in for surgery on his arm to remove his other piece of cancer, but he got to surgery & the surgeon refused to do the surgery until whatever was happening with his face was taken care of.  He went back to dermatology & they were mortified at what happened.  Apparently this was NOT supposed to do what it was doing.  They prescribed a ton of medications for him & told him his face was infected all over.  They told him not to shave & to try to wash his face in vinegar 3 times a day.

Each day, more pieces of his face fell off so that he began looking like a leper.  It was painful, ugly, & just miserable.  Trek continued to go to work, but he felt bad because nobody would even look at him at this point.  They just avoided him which made his job even harder.

Luckily about 10 days later, the blisters ended, the ugly skin fell off, & the new skin started to heal.  His skin slowly started getting back to normal & he could shave, sleep, & be pain free again.

Once that happened, he was able to go in for surgery & get the other cancerous spot removed from his arm.

Dermatology has not yet decided what the next step will be regarding the cancer on his face.  Trek said he'd be willing to go through all this again if it would mean he is cancer free, but dermatology doesn't want to do that again for fear of damaging his skin cells permanently.  We are waiting to hear what his next step of treatment is.

Poor guy.  I love him so much that this killed me.  I absolutely hate seeing the love of my life in pain.  He is such a trooper & is SO strong.  He is such an example to me.