My 98 year old aunt who is in good health for her age, was just diagnosed with Superficial Basal Cell Carcinoma. It is on her cheek. She has had this on her face for a long time... longer than a year I suspect.
Her doc has given two choices…. Chemotherapy cream (which seems like a good answer, but the treatment and Aunty's anxiety may not handle). The second choice is surgery (localized numbing to get it all out and then two sutures in and maybe out). There would be a scar (a line) that could be camouflaged with makeup or will blend with wrinkles. The third option is to just do nothing. With the word superficial, it sounds like it could be ignored, but if she lives 10 more years…. What are the possible problems?
Everything I read says have it removed, but nothing related to someone that is 98 years old. (She is scared of a horrible after scar or divet in her cheek which is very thin.)
She knows I'm asking for opinions. (She goes to the grocery store once a week with my husband, her nephew. She gets in and out of the car on her own. She does her own laundry and fixes her own breakfast and lunch. Reads the newspaper and does crossword puzzles... starting to get forgetful, but who isn't.)
At her age I would try the cream. Certainly no surgery, it may be quite deep and then the resulting bruising from surgery.
Dad has had more skin cancers than I can keep track over over the last 20 years. He has had them surgically removed, frozen off and had the Chemo cream. The chemo cream has been used on places like his nose and the back of his hands where there is very little flesh.
On his nose it worked very well. On the back of his hands in 2017, age 87, it worked, but he wound up getting a staph infection as he would not scratching it and he does not trim his fingernails. The staph infection spread from the back of his right hand to his right arm, where he was also scratching.
Dad does not have dementia, but he had not been properly applying the chemo cream or it was too strong, I cannot remember which now. He had to go on antibiotics to clear up the infection, then went back on the chemo cream to clear up the cancer.
Hind sight, I would have had it removed and been done with it.
I would make the doctor give you a timeline prognosis for doing nothing. Ask him what he would do if it was his mom.
At 98 how much longer can she possibly live? And if it is asymptomatic, why borrow trouble?
edit - the cream sounds like a simpler, less invasive option but from my research it is anything but!!