Rachel Maddow reveals she underwent surgery to remove skin cancer: 'I am going to be absolutely fine'

Rachel Maddow kicked off her show on Wednesday by revealing she had undergone surgery to remove skin cancer. 

Maddow began addressing the "personal matter" by recalling how she went to a minor league baseball game "a couple of months ago" and how her partner Susan "poked me in the neck" and noticed how her mole "has changed."

After quickly dismissing Susan's concern, Susan told Maddow, "No, that mole has changed. We've been together for 22 years, that mole has changed. I know it" and challenged her to ask her hairstylist to see if she would notice the change, which she did. 

"Long story short: Susan was right, Diane was right. I went to the dermatologist… did a biopsy, turns out it was skin cancer," Maddow said. "Skin cancer accounts for the vast majority of cancers diagnosed in the United States and the vast majority of skin cancers are removable, treatable. But here’s the thing I’m going to tell you. Even the deadliest kinds of skin cancer now, the ones that are- you know, that like to spread to other parts of your body, the ones that really try to kill you, even the skin cancers that are the deadliest skin cancers in the country, those two are way more treatable than they used to be on one condition- that you get them early. Even the most worrying forms of skin cancer. If you identify it early enough, it is now quite treatable. Advances in the last few years have been leaps and bounds. Skin cancer, like I said, there’s a lot of different kinds of skin cancer. Even the worst ones are eminently more treatable than they used to be. And if you get them early, they’re almost all completely treatable."

Maddow "introduced" viewers to her Band-aid following the surgery she said she had on Friday, explaining that led to her absence since then. 

"I am going to be absolutely fine. I'm going to be totally fine, but that is why I have a Band-aid," Maddow said.

The MSNBC host said she "felt fine" after the surgery but did not appear on-air later that evening to now "weird" viewers out by the visual of her bandage but said she "asked" to come back to her show on Wednesday. 

"I want to use this moment to tell you something, which is you should get checked," Maddow pleaded to her viewers. "If you’ve got moles like I do, just get on a schedule with your doctor. Schedule a check now with your doctor and then when your doctor tells you you’re fine but you should do this every year, put it in the calendar in your phone for a year from now and then actually come back and do that follow-up appointment. You know what I’m talking about, right? You know there’s all this stuff that you should regularly check, and you do it once and never again because they tell you you're fine, that’s this guy right here. It’s only by the grace of Susan that I found mine in enough time that it was totally treatable. Because I have been blowing off my appointments forever to get stuff like that checked because I’ve assumed it will always be fine. Well, in this case, it was Susan who checked it for me. And thank God. Not everybody has a Susan, I recognize." 

"And you do need to get this stuff checked by a doctor. Do not blow it off. Honestly, it is the easiest doctor's appointment in the world of all the things you go to the doctor for… Again, lots of Americans get skin cancer. The deadliest of skin cancers would love to try to kill you if you don’t catch them and they get to run wild. But if you get even those worst kinds of skin cancer early, which is the easiest thing in the world as far as doctor’s visits go, if you get it early, you can murder it instead of it murdering you," Maddow added.