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Last
year, 13-year-old Ryan noticed something odd about a mole on his
head. He says, “It just started growing and changing colors,
so my mom took me to the hospital to get it taken off.” Mom
Nichole Pennick says, “They told me not to worry about it
because kids that young don’t normally have a problem with
skin cancer, and then when it came back being the worst kind of
skin cancer, melanoma, I was really shocked.”
Normally it takes a lifetime of sun exposure to develop melanoma… but
Ryan never wore sunscreen…and he has a big risk factor. “He
is very fair. He is very blonde. He has very fair skin,” says
pediatric oncologist Dr. Louis Rapkin of the Aflac Cancer Center
at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.
Melanoma is deadly when it spreads, first to the lymph nodes,
then to organs like the lungs and the brain. Dr. Rapkin says, “At
the point that melanoma begins to spread, it becomes a very difficult
disease to treat. Surgery in its very nature is not going to be
able to cure this. You can take out all the disease you think you
see, but there is still more disease in the body you can’t
see.”
For Ryan, the disease did spread to his lymph nodes. Dr. Rapkin
says, “And lymph nodes were removed both in the front and
back portion of his neck to make sure there was no other melanoma.”
Doctors believe they have removed all the cancer from
Ryan’s body…but they can’t be sure. Dr. Rapkin
says, “ Ryan’s survival would probably be in the neighborhood
of about 50 or 60 percent, estimated from the curves at 15 years.
So he is someone that we are going to have to watch long term.”
He says, “I would recommend that you learn to avoid sun
exposure, that you are not blasé about sunburn, and you
consider tanning especially in the adolescent population something
akin to smoking.”
Dr. Rapkin says even one blistering sunburn during childhood can
more then triple your risk of developing melanoma. |
