Copyright thespinoff
Mine started with something on my back, the year I turned 50. Whatever it was, I never saw it. Just the blood on the towel when drying myself after a shower. The year before I was born, my Auntie Molly died of melanoma. She was 37 years old. I have no real-life memories, just the black and white pictures in an old photo album. “Molly in hospital” says the neat handwritten caption and there she is, a beautiful dark-haired woman in a cardie and capri pants, reclining on a daybed. Auntie Molly had two young children, a busy life and a strange-looking mole on her foot. Apparently it bled and that was where it all started. Mine started with something on my back, the year I turned 50. Whatever it was, I never saw it. Just the blood on the towel when drying myself after a shower. Like a blood blister that wouldn’t stop bleeding. I waited for it to dry, then stuck a plaster on it. After a few days, the plaster fell off and I thought nothing of it. Until it happened again. And again. It’s hard to get a proper look at stuff on your back, even with a mirror. I’d twist myself around, trying to see, but it didn’t look like anything much. Just a small piece of raised skin and a scab. I tried to ignore it but it kept on bleeding. After a few weeks, I took my scabby back to the dermatologist. “Pretty sure this is nothing to worry about,” he said. Then he whacked in some local anaesthetic and cut a neat little patch of skin from my back. A few days later, I got a phone call at work. I remember being surprised it was the dermatologist, not his receptionist. “Your results have come back,” he said. “It’s a bit unexpected.” Something about needing to take a wider excision. And then that word, “melanoma”, and I couldn’t think straight. “No need to worry at this point,” he said. Then he scheduled my next appointment. First thing the following day. The run-up to Christmas 2010 was a blur. More skin taken, stitches this time. Then blood tests, ultrasounds and CT scans. I was flown to Christchurch for a PET scan. Every time I underwent a procedure, it turned out I needed more procedures. The prognosis was getting worse. In mid-December, on a gurney outside the operating theatre at Hutt Hospital, I was awaiting surgery to remove lymph nodes and excavate more skin from my back. Alone and comfortably numb on the pre-op meds, I was approached by an unfamiliar doctor carrying a clipboard. “Not sure if you know but there’s something you need to be aware of.” He looked uncomfortable. “We’ve identified a lesion on your left lung – adjacent to the lymph nodes and the original melanoma. We’ll need to follow this up.” Then I was wheeled into the operating theatre. As one of the specialists told me afterwards, melanoma likes to travel. Fast. All round the body. Surgery waiting lists were long, even then. In March 2011, a surgeon at Wellington Hospital removed the upper lobe of my left lung. Two and a half weeks later l was recovering at home when he phoned me. Lots of words about lab tests and processes, then suddenly, “Much more favourable than expected.” At first I couldn’t grasp what he was saying. I asked him to repeat it and he said it again. Miraculously, the tumour was benign. Turns out it was a “stumble-upon”, completely unrelated – the kind of thing that may never have been found if I hadn’t been diagnosed with melanoma. For a long time afterwards, I was hyper-vigilant. Not just about my own skin but other people’s as well. Several years ago I was browsing a crowded farmers market when I spotted a large suspicious-looking mole on a woman’s leg, directly in front of me. I was waiting in a queue and the asymmetrical growth on the back of her calf caught my eye. It was raised, scabby, mottled and blackish, with irregular margins – just like the photos in the skin cancer posters. She paid for her veges and moved off. Five minutes later there she was again, this time right next to me, the growth on her calf clearly visible. Obviously I couldn’t not say something. I took a deep, brave breath and started the conversation. “Oh no!”, she said, clearly alarmed. She looked down to where I was pointing and frowned, gently dabbing it with a tissue. Then she started to laugh. By now she was bent over, picking at the thing. “It’s bird shit! But thank you!” Then she told me about her own teenage son and the mole she’d spotted on his back. That it turned out to be melanoma but he had it removed early. That several years on he’s completely fine. Sometimes I think about my misspent youth, when people described sunbathing as their actual hobby and we had no understanding of the risks. Us kids knew that summer hadn’t properly started till you got a stubbed toe, a bee sting and a good dose of sunburn. And as teenagers we knew that getting a decent tan took real commitment – hours in the sun, patrolling your body for tan lines, slathering on baby oil and peeling off layers of skin afterwards. In my early 20s, I learnt to deal with acne on my back and shoulders by burning it off. Mostly with the sun, occasionally via a sunlamp. It worked like a charm. It’s 15 years this month since I was diagnosed with stage 3 melanoma. I’m one of the lucky ones. Last week, walking past my local hairdresser, I saw a sign advertising sunbed sessions – $15 each and on your sixth session, a 50% discount. I kept walking, all the way home. Then I looked online. There are sunbeds all over the place. Their pitches? “The healthy way to get a tan!” And their reassurances? “We follow all Ministry of Health guidelines.” The World Health Organisation classifies sunbeds as carcinogenic. According to Consumer, which regularly surveys sunbed operators, “sunbed use is associated with an increased risk of early-onset melanoma”. In Australia and other parts of the world, commercial sunbeds are banned. Not here, despite us having one of the highest rates of melanoma in the world. All we have is a ban on use by under-18s and a bunch of voluntary guidelines. I wonder if my local hairdresser knows about all this. Maybe they do. There’s a note at the bottom of their home page. It’s an odd kind of postscript, in a tiny font that’s easy to miss. It says they “support and fundraise for cancer research”.
