Woman facing sixth bout with skin cancer

Wendy Maechtle felt the familiar rush of adrenaline on Valentine’s Day this year. “Some girls were getting Valentines flowers and chocolates,” she recalled. “I found a tumor in my right armpit.”

For many, an unexplained bump could be no big deal. But Wendy knew the drill. As she had four times previously, she immediately scheduled a doctor’s appointment, then anxiously waited out the weekend.

“I was climbing the walls, because I knew,” she said.

By that Wednesday, she had the answer she expected: an unprecedented sixth bout with melanoma, the most aggressive form of skin cancer.

At 63, Maechtle, a resident of Columbia Falls, is a veteran of this fight. She’s confronted melanoma at least once in every decade since her 20s. Now, during skin cancer awareness month and after 36 years of living with the same foe — an almost unheard-of survival rate for stage IV melanoma — she’s determined both to continue fighting and to spread the word on the dangers of skin cancer.

“I never dreamt it would come back again,” she said of round six. “I thought I was done. I never dwelled on it. I never sat around thinking ‘poor me.’ I’m not that type of person ... I want to make people aware. People are not aware.”

Maechtle said she is working against the idea that skin cancer is a breeze — something you have removed once and then leave behind forever. “I’ve known so many people since I’ve had my reoccurrence to come up to me and say ‘Oh, I had melanoma in my arm five years ago. It’s no big deal.’ It is a big deal!

“It does not come back as a mole. It’ll come back as a tumor.”

This is precisely what happened with Maechtle. She was 27, single and fresh off a move to the Flathead Valley from Washington when she noticed a dime-sized mole on her calf that grew irregularly. After six months of watching it develop into a discolored, bleeding spot, she got it removed by a doctor in Columbia Falls. But the procedure came with a catch: a potentially terminal diagnosis of stage IV melanoma.

At the time, in 1982, there were few treatments for melanoma other than surgery, and doctors in the valley and Seattle told her that it was unlikely she’d make it. But after a surgery at the University of Washington Medical Center removed all the lymph nodes in her left thigh, she seemed to be in the clear.

A husband, David, and baby, Amanda, followed. Then, when Amanda was 10 months old, Maechtle found another bump on her leg.

After her first bout with melanoma, she was told by a physician that “if you ever get a lump or bump, you get it checked out immediately.” What once was a mole had come back as a tumor, again malignant and life-threatening.

It was a pattern that would repeat itself in 2001, 2008 and 2012.

According to the American Cancer Society, the 10-year survival rate for stage IV melanoma is about 10 to 15 percent. Survivors of melanoma can guard against recurrence through a healthy lifestyle and avoidance of sun and UV rays, but if the skin cancer reappears, it will most likely return at an advanced stage.

“My goal is to fight until there is no fight left,” said Maechtle of her bouts with melanoma. “And I’m pretty ornery, pretty tough.”

She credits her strength to family, friends made in the Flathead over 40 years, volunteering with Wings in Kalispell and a mean independent streak. She kept moving through the diagnoses and chemotherapy treatments over the years, working as a medical assistant for Kalispell Medical Oncology until 2010 and taking up daily runs, when she’s able.

At this point, she said with all the community support, “my attitude is positive.” She blogs daily on Facebook, keeps up with some errands and attends her 8-year-old grandson’s cross-country meets.

“But then I have my moments too when I’m human, and I think ‘why me?’ and I’ll cry,” she said.

No one is saying the word “terminal” yet “and I’m not planning on it, but I have one heck of a fight here,” she said. As with many melanoma recurrences, the malignant cancer has spread beyond her armpit to a lesion on her abdomen, groin and left hip.

Now facing a “double blast” of chemotherapy doses every three weeks, she’s pushing through the fatigue to spread the word and hold on to the goal of seeing her three grandkids — ages 8, 5 and 2 — grow up.

Maechtle emphasizes many of the steps recommended by national cancer organizations in preventing melanoma: wear sunscreen, cover up and avoid the sun when you can. According to the American Cancer Society, there are numerous risk factors for melanoma, including family history with the disease, fair skin and a weakened immune system. But melanoma can strike anyone — it’s one of the most common cancers afflicting people under age 30 — and proper protection from the sun remains a crucial step in melanoma prevention.

Maechtle attributes her battles with melanoma, at least in part, to her fair skin and lack of awareness regarding UV exposure and sunscreen growing up in Minnesota and California. Her mission, she said, is to keep people from making the same oversights and to encourage vigilance for unexplained “lumps and bumps.”

“I want people to be aware,” she said. “If I can save a life or help somebody, that’s why I’m here. I don’t want anybody to go through what I’ve been through. Once, let alone six times. It’s why I’m still here.”

For more information on melanoma causes, prevention and treatment, as well as other forms of skin cancer, visit the American Cancer Society website at https://www.cancer.org/cancer/skin-cancer.html

Reporter Adrian Horton can be reached at ahorton@dailyinterlake.com or at 758-4439.