I am the luckiest girl in the world....

...because I no longer have a malignant melanoma that might almost certainly have killed me. Yes, that's right - the mole on my leg was the big, bad M word - melanoma. The GP called about lunch time to give me the news. It was a superficial spreading melanoma, which means that it had turned malignant but had not yet penetrated the lower level of skin and was not invasive. The lump he took out of my leg last week was all of it so I am in the clear.

As the GP said 'You are almost like someone who never had it'. I was absolutely stunned to get this news. I was so certain that it would be benign. There is a 2mm area all around the offending brown spot that is clear of malignant cells but just in case there are more, he is sending me to the melanoma clinic at RPA to have it looked at by a dermatologist. The reason being - they will want to take out a wider margin, which might involve giving me a skin graft rather than stitching me up, which he doesn't want to do in the GP surgery.

All of this is absolutely fine with me. I really don't care if I have a massive awful ugly scar - just so long as I know that I'm not going to die. The prognosis for melanoma is really bad - it is one of the worst and most aggressive cancers you can have. Thank god for GPs. They are the gods of medicine as far as I am concerned. And thank god I was so vigilant in keeping an eye on the nasty little brown spot and doing something about it straight away. Even another few weeks might have been too late.

Anyway, I am feeling positively euphoric. I just can't believe that I have come so close to something so awful and I am going to be fine. I hope I am not getting too complacent too soon but it really seems like all of the nasty cancerous cells have gone.

Through all this, one of the first things that came into my head was would we have to cancel this next IVF cycle. The GP thought it would probably be fine but wanted the fertility specialist to make the call. I talked to her about it and she thought it would all be fine. In her words -'We aren't doing anything that will interfere with the derm's work and they aren't doing anything that will interfere with us'. She even said it is ok to have a general anaesthetic while undergoing an IVF cycle if need be. That was a huge relief too. I would have been really sad if this cycle was cancelled before it even started.

My other IVF #2 preparations seem positively mundane compared with the dramas above. Lovely husband called the clinic today to pay for the next cycle. He wants to use his AMEX card since he will get loads of points on it. They couldn't do it for him because they said there was no treatment plan for me. This is because I haven't started my cycle yet so it's a bit of a case of chicken and egg.

Anyway, I called the nurses and said I was coming in for a blood test tomorrow since, amongst all this mayhem, AF has finally arrived. I also talked to the finance people who said they now have a new system whereby I can provide a credit card authorisation at the start of the cycle and they will deduct the fees just before egg pick-up and again before transfer. This means we will be out of pocket for much less time since we can lodge the Medicare claim just after transfer.

So, tomorrow is the first blood test and all being well I should be starting stimulation on Wednesday.

I am feeling so positive about this IVF cycle now, in light of finding out I have saved myself from getting skin cancer. It really brings life into perspective a hell of a lot.