Not Just Skin Deep: New Moles

from bhg.com
Even if you've never had a skin scare, you can never be too vigilant about alerting your doctor to any changes in your skin, no matter how neurotic it makes you feel to report what may seem like a small matter. Three years ago, Patty Suessen did just that. Then 42, Suessen had gone to the dermatologist because she'd suddenly noticed a new mole on her right shoulder. While the mole didn't fit most of the signs she'd heard about, it had appeared out of nowhere, so she decided to have it checked out.

Suessen's instinct was right. Tests revealed that she had stage II melanoma -- the lesion was thickened and the cancer had spread to the lymph glands. Within the next few weeks, Suessen had surgeries to remove both the melanoma tumor and the adjoining lymph nodes.

"There is no proven way to prevent melanoma, so early detection is key," says Kaufman. In fact, despite continually rising incidence rates of melanoma, survival rates are also increasing. "It's not the treatments that are improving," says Marianne Berwick, PhD, head of epidemiology and cancer prevention at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, "but it's the fact that we're catching the disease earlier."

After surgery, Suessen's doctor recommended a year of interferon alpha injections. Her fast-paced job as a software trainer took a beating; the interferon made her feel constantly foggy and hampered her ability to think quickly on her feet. And that was on top of the other side effects: severe fatigue, nausea and vomiting, weight loss, and thinning hair.

While her employer was understanding during Suessen's treatment, she endured the experience largely on her own. She lives alone, and at the time of her diagnosis, she was helping to care for her elderly parents. She shielded them from the worst of her condition. Suessen also discovered that some of her friends just did not understand what she was going through.

"People are like, 'Oh, yeah, I had skin cancer, too. I had something removed right here,'" she says. Few of them realized that the disease was endangering her life, and she wasn't comfortable confronting them with this fact. "Some people don't realize how serious melanoma is. They think you can just lop it off and you'll be fine," says Casey Culbertson.

Melanoma patients often don't receive the support and acknowledgment that women with, say, breast cancer receive. With vastly more patients to serve, there are dozens of well-funded organizations dedicated to breast-cancer advocacy, education, and research, says Culbertson, while there are only a few (not nearly as well-funded) groups with the same mission for melanoma patients and their families.

The bottom line is that, despite constant health warnings and pervasive sun-safety campaigns, public awareness about the true dangers of malignant melanoma still hasn't taken hold. What would it take? For better or worse, it seems as if every disease, no matter how rare, has a celebrity spokesperson or an attention-getting fund-raiser or a color-coded accessory attached to it. Until melanoma gets the same attention, it's likely to continue to be underestimated and misunderstood. And that could be a deadly mistake.

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