Most collegiettes have heard that using tanning beds increase your risk of developing skin cancer, but so many of us disregard that scary truth when preparing for spring break. To reveal the impact skin cancer can have the life of a college student, HCIU sat down with Ali, a 21 year old junior who was recently diagnosed with malignant melanoma. Read about her history with tanning beds, and learn why she has vowed to never use one again.
I was in high school when I started going to tanning beds. One of my good friends actually worked at the tanning salon so I thought, “That might be good. I could tan before spring break.” I’m naturally super white. Ghost white, so I obviously started off very slow and then started going tanning on a routine basis. The second I finished school, my sister and I would go tanning and then go home.
At first, I would only go 3 times a week. Not obsessive. I know some people who would literally go everyday and that definitely wasn’t me. My mom had a history of melanoma and didn’t like that I did it, but I thought that being young and not doing it that frequently wasn’t that big of a deal. And then I came to college and sort of kept doing it just because it was habit. I had read a lot of places that it’s much better to tan gradually than to get super roasted, as far as skin cancer works. Especially like if you go on break and if you’re really naturally pale like I am, if you get super burnt, that’s when you get into trouble skin cancer wise. So I kind of rationalized it to myself that way. I never really thought anything of it.
Since my mom has skin cancer, I’ve been followed by dermatologists and at the end of this summer, which I spent abroad, I had a couple freckles that looked like they had been changing even though I hadn’t been tanning. I was in London and there isn’t much sun there at all. So I went to the dermatologist and he biopsied them and 3 of the 4 came back having abnormal cells, but nothing really odd. They went in and kind of just took all the abnormal cells out just to be sure. Especially for someone who’s high risk like me with a family history of cancer, they’d rather pull it out.
Having a mom who’s been through it, I kind of knew what to look for, and these specific moles had the categories that you’re supposed to look for; irregular boarders, if they’re raised, if they’re kind of discolored, if they’re changing, that’s when you know, “Hey, this is looking a little bit odd. I should probably go ahead, and like, cut it off. Double check.” So even after having three abnormal dysplastic moles in August, I still decided it would be a good idea to continue to go tanning, thinking, I know I have abnormal cells, but they’re just going to keeping cutting them off and it’s not going to be a big deal.
Now I think of that mindset and realize it’s pretty naive. But, you know, you never think it’s going to happen to you. Over the last month I noticed one on my leg changing a bit. I went in to the dermatologist and he biopsied the one that I was worried about and two others, and I got a call on Valentine’s Day that said, “The one you were worried about is a little bit dysplastic, but you have malignant melanoma on your right arm.”
I went into the dermatologists office that day and joked with him about cutting off the melanomas, and he laughed and kind of joked with me about it, because someone who’s 21 doesn’t get cancer, but I did. And you never think it’s going to happen to you, but it did and I think a lot of it probably has to do with the fact that I was an idiot and went tanning after having abnormal cancerous cells. Why would anyone ever do that? Because you don’t think it’s ever going to happen to you.
Now I’m waiting for them to cut it out, hopefully soon. They haven’t yet determined if it’s deep enough that it could have spread to other areas of the skin or other organ systems in general.
The idea that it could spread hasn’t become a real sort of thing yet. I’m hoping that I don’t have to deal with it at all and I just will kind of deal with it as it comes. As far as cancers go, skin cancer is one of the best to have, but melanoma is by far the worst type of skin cancer to have. People die from melanomas. Most of the time people who were irresponsible about sun exposure. It literally says it in the tanning place… There’s like a sign saying tanning can cause this sort of thing, and I did it anyway. That was dumb. Hopefully now I’ve kind of realized that it’s not good.
I’m obviously not going to become a hermit and never go out in the sun again. It’s fine to lay out on the beach with your friends on spring break, that sort of thing, but why would anyone spend hundreds of dollars on giving themselves cancer just to appear darker? At this point it’s kind of like, why would you care about that? Why would you care what color your skin is when the alternative is, “Oh, I’m going to have skin that’s a couple shades darker, but I’m also going to have cancer.” To me it’s like, did I think that through? And then why are you spending $30 a month to make your skin a couple shades darker? That doesn’t make sense. Get yourself satellite radio, or take yourself out for a steak. Those things are so much more fun.
For the people who do go to tanning beds on a regular basis, I just hope you’re luckier than me. And I mean, I am a very lucky person, but I guess… Yeah, I hope you get lucky. Because at 21, I’m in a sorority, I have school, I work in a lab, I do IUDM, I do a lot of stuff. It’s going to create a huge impact on my life. You really wish you hadn’t gone tanning when you’re sitting in an oncologist’s office. You really wish you hadn’t gone tanning when you’re telling your best friends. It’s still not real. And hopefully it won’t ever be. Hopefully it will go away and be fine before the time that it gets to be a problem enough to be real, but as of now, you know, you’ve got to deal with it, but it happens to people our age. It happens to normal people. It’s not just that one odd ball that went tanning every 30 seconds and had a tanning bed in their house. It happens to the kid who went a couple times a week. You never know.
There’s a bit of perspective that comes with it. Like, every day you might get a phone call that says, “Hey, you’ve got cancer.” For me, listening to someone complain about a boy, it’s like I’m sorry, that sucks, but you could have cancer. It’s kind of giving me a little bit of perspective about being lucky to be healthy and being lucky enough to make healthy choices in my life. Everyone has the choice to go tanning. It’s not like you have a job where you’re outside all the time, where you’re forced to be out there. This is a choice that you’re making. Be smart enough to make the right one.