I just went to the dermatologist last week for my annual skin cancer screening. It had been almost two years since I had gone because when I got pregnant, I had so many doctor's appointments and was taking so much time off from work, I sort of let everything else fall through the cracks. Then the past 11 months I've been so consumed with taking care of an infant, I once again let myself take a back seat. I'm supposed to go every 6 months, because I've had skin cancer before...yes, you read that right. I found out the hard way that you're never too young.
So many of my friends have been posting on Facebook lately about lying out and getting some pre-Memorial Day color, and I just want to shake them and be like, "are you crazy??" When I was a teenager, I did my fair share of lying out, and even visited a tanning bed a few times during the Winter. But as I read more and more about Melanoma and how fast it can spread down through the skin and into your body, invading other organs and quickly becoming serious (even deadly), I started protecting myself.
I have the type of skin that is high risk- fair, Irish/English, and lots of moles and freckles, but it can happen to anyone of any ethnicity, with any skin tone.
In 2009 when I was 31, a friend of mine saw a pink bump in the part of my hair. He said he never noticed it before and when I went home, I looked at it with a mirror. I figured it was a pimple and left it alone. But it didn't go away, so finally I went to the dermatologist. I was a little concerned because I had been on several trips to the Caribbean during the summer in recent years and had gotten sunburns on my part as a result of forgetting to put sunscreen there. She said she didn't think it was anything, but removed it for testing just to be safe.
It came back as a Basal Cell Carcinoma. When I found out it was cancer I started to panic but she assured me that that type of cancer very rarely spreads beyond the skin and wasn't fatal. I was relieved that it wasn't Melanoma, but due to the fact that it was on my scalp, I had to visit a plastic surgeon. He had to remove the skin surrounding the bump to make sure they got every bit of the cancer and I ended up getting quite a large chunk of skin removed and had my first experience with staples which was pretty painful and really grossed everyone out. Now there's a spot on my head where the hair will never grow back and as a result, I changed my part. But it's a constant reminder that I need to be careful.
Interestingly, my Father who ever since I can remember, has always been that guy who lays on the beach all summer (with nothing but SPF 2 and gets a deep dark tan every year) just got his very first Basal Cell a week after I got mine. It just goes to show you that it can happen at any age. Mine just happened to be very early.
The other day when I went for my long-overdue appointment, my dermatologist noticed a mole that had the characteristics of melanoma. She removed it and sent it to the lab to make sure. As I await my phone call, I think about how scared I was all those years ago when I first heard about how deadly melanoma can be, and I think about how much worse that feeling is now that I have a little boy who is dependent on me. I don't want to leave him, and more than anything I want to see him grow up. I just have so much more to lose now and it's a terrible feeling. I'm sure that I'm worrying for nothing and my test results will come back just fine, but there's always that thought in the back of your mind saying, "what if?"
I hate that I waited so long in between checkups and I hate that I was so motivated to be tan when I was younger. I wish I had known what I know now.
So please, do me a favor and wear SPF...all.the.time. Don't go to tanning beds, don't lie out without protecting yourself. At the very least, you'll have a gorgeous youthful look well into your 30's and 40's without all those age spots and crows feet starting to crop up. But most importantly, you won't be sitting there waiting for that phone call that informs you that you have cancer. I've been there and done that...hopefully for the last time.
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