Related Document: killer_tan.pdf
(Reprinted with permission from The Gleaner)
You say you're dying for a really deep, dark tan?So was a sadder but wiser Laci Hanley, who now realizes a person can literally die for the sake of staying tanned.Laci, only 26, is fine. But had she waited much longer to have a suspicious mole examined, she likely wouldn't have been so lucky.The local resident, an HCC pre-nursing student and part-time employee in the school's financial aid office, learned a few weeks ago that the mole on her mid-chest had cancer cells present.It was melanoma -- the deadliest of the three types of skin cancer.Laci, who is sounding the warning about unprotected exposure to ultraviolet rays, said the cancer hadn't penetrated the entire depth of the mole and was in its earliest stages.Looking back, she says had she known five or six months ago what she knows now, she would have rushed to the doctor when she first realized the mole was beginning to change color.It gradually transformed from the dark brown it had been since childhood to purple, "and yet, I kept on going to the tanning bed every day," said the divorced mom of Abbi, 5, and Ashton, 3. "I thought it was so important to have a tan."She also sunbathed, and spent hours in a boat on Kentucky Lake. Not only did she not wear a speck of sunscreen, but sometimes used "tanning accelerator.
"I'd heard about skin cancer, but didn't think it would happen to me."Laci, who has dark blond hair and naturally fair skin, was at the vacation home belonging to her mom and stepfather, Joni and Darrell Smith, in latter May and relaxing with Joni on the deck when she decided to have her mother take a look at the mole.
"I go by what my mom tells me," Laci said. "She looked at the mole and said, 'Oh, yeah, Laci, you need to get that checked out!' "She made an appointment right away and the mole was biopsied. Laci had a feeling that the news would be bad, and it was. Surgery followed, with a wide excision intended to catch any stray cancer cells.Then Laci sweated bullets waiting three days for the results of tests on the excised tissue.
"I couldn't sleep. I couldn't focus in class, and my children could tell something was wrong," she said. She faced the grim possibility that they would grow up without her.But the report was good. There was no melanoma in the excised tissue. "They tell me I have a 97 percent chance that it won't come back because we caught it so early," she said.I asked Angela Mills, a physician's assistant with Henderson Dermatology, what might have happened had Laci waited another five or six months before seeing a doctor.
"If she had delayed, she could have been in a much worse situation," Angela said, and might have required chemotherapy and radiation in addition to surgery.It could have been a "life or death situation" had she waited, Angela said. "You can't predict how fast the cancer will progress."Laci felt she had escaped a death sentence, and was so jubilant upon hearing that she was OK, decided to keep the kids home from pre-school and have an all-day celebration.These days, she wears nothing less than a sunscreen with a protective factor of 70, and she keeps the children covered in sunblock, too. She will be examined every three months for a time to make sure there's no recurrence.Laci learned the hard way that youth and general good health don't provide immunity against trouble. "You don't think about it until something like this happens," she said.
"It was a reality check for me."She no longer thinks there's anything wrong with being fair-skinned. "I don't mind as long as I'm alive," she said, smiling. "I've got kids to raise."
By Judy Jenkins
The Gleaner
