REPORT

One Small Freckle

TAN LINES ARE IN — OR, AT LEAST, FAKING THEM IS. BUT SHOULD WE REALLY BE GLORIFYING SKIN DAMAGE, WHETHER IT’S REAL OR NOT? ALISSA THOMAS KNOWS ALL TOO WELL A BURN IS NOT A BRAG

“Is that the skin one?” a young acquaintance asks me when sI tell them the name of the cancer I have. I’m constantly surprised by the small amount of knowledge people have of melanoma. Although I ought not to be, I suppose, I was probably one of them once. In my teens and twenties, despite being aware of the dangers of sun damage, melanoma was a medical term, a disease I didn’t really understand. After all, at that age the reality of one of my freckles turning into a life-threatening disease seemed as far-fetched as turning 40.

A couple of decades later, however, at 41, I discovered a small area on my left shoulder blade that looked a bit like scar tissue. I was confused. It was an area of my body mostly out of sight and, while the spot looked innocuous enough, I’d never seen anything like it before. It wasn’t a mole or a blister like I thought most skin cancer appeared, but it gave me a weird sense of dread.

I sought opinions from a GP, a dermatologist and a skin-cancer doctor, but they all told me it was nothing to worry about. I was probably just suffering from anxiety. A biopsy confirmed they were right, it was benign. However, about three months later, a small red blister appeared over the same spot and I felt the dread again. This time, when the doctor examined it, I saw his expression change. He said to me, “This needs to be removed immediately,” and I knew exactly what that meant.

Australia has some of the highest levels of UV radiation in the world as well as the most melanoma cases — it has been tagged as our ‘national cancer’. Melanoma is the most dangerous type of skin cancer; a malignant kind that burrows from layer to layer of skin until it’s able to invade the rest of the body. It’s caused by exposure to the sun and UV rays, damaging cells and causing trauma to the body’s largest organ: the skin. It starts with inflammation that appears as a burn or tan as your body creates an immune response to repair damaged cells. According to the Cancer Council website, “Once the cells of the top layer of skin (called keratinocytes) detect DNA damage in themselves, they begin producing molecules to attract immune cells into the skin. This causes the skin’s blood vessels to leak into the spaces between cells and other skin structures. It’s this extra fluid and the swelling it causes that leads to the red skin, hot sensation and painful sensitivity of freshly sunburnt skin.”