I had a dear friend years ago who was on vacation at the beach with her husband when she noticed a rather large black jagged spot on his lower back and it looked like it had been there for awhile. She told her husband when they get back home that she wanted him to visit the doctor because it didn’t look good. She tried to enjoy their vacation but in the back of her mind this large black spot kept a nagging uneasy feeling in the center of her mind.
Once they had returned home they both took a trip to the doctor to find out what this peculiar spot was, and when the doctor looked at it, my friend knew by the doctor’s eyes that there was a problem. He ordered tests to be done immediately and the wait was long and stressful.
After several days they got a call for both of them to come into the doctors office and the doctor gave them the terrible news that he had melanoma cancer and it was in the late stages. He also indicated there would be more tests run to ensure the cancer was not in any other areas of the body.
Needless to say, the cancer had spread throughout his body and the diagnosis wasn’t good either. The doctor told them that her husband may have three to six months to live, but he didn’t live another month. I’ll never forget this because it absorbed me with fear because I had a lot of moles and I was terribly afraid that I would be a victim too.
I read on the ABC News Internet site an article about melanoma cancer and I immediately was interested in reading it and to pass it onto readers since I have a definite fear of melanoma because of the number of moles I have.
The article indicated that younger adult’s especially young women have a higher rate of developing melanoma cancer. Do you know that melanoma is a dangerous form of skin cancer and it can spread if not caught in time? According to a new study, a person’s odds for survival is improving when the disease is cause in time.
In the article it indicated that Dr. Jerry Brewer and colleagues at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., a study found the incidence of cutaneous melanoma rose by a factor of more than 6 from 1970-1979 through 2000-2009.
It also indicated that Brewer and colleagues reported the risk of dying from melanoma fell by 9 percent per year over the same period according to an article in the April issue of the Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
The ABC News reported that the finding came from data collected from medical information provided by and from residents of Olmstead County, Minn. This data collection began in 1966 by the Rochester Epidemiology Project. The researchers advised that the residents of the county were largely white and highly educated and the research might not reflect the rest of the U.S. population and these results might not apply more widely.
According to researchers the research that was based on CDC’s Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) database shows the national melanoma rates were on the rise, the survival rate is improving.
In a statement by Brewer, "We anticipated we’d find rising rates like other studies have suggested but we found a higher incidence than the National Cancer Institute had initally reported by using the (SEER) database, and in particular, a histrionic rise in women in their 20s and 30s."
According to the ABC News report I’d like to mention here that according to the researcher reports this analysis was done on 256 men and women and ranging in the ages of 18 to 39, and with a first lifetime diagnosis of melanoma and from a timeline from January 1, 1970, through December 31, 2009.
I’d like to advise that people should have their bodies checked on a periodically basis to have their moles inspected. People cannot view their entire body in the same manner as a professional can and they also know what type moles they’re looking for as being suspicious. If melanoma is found in the early stages, it is preventable and will probably require only the removal of the mole.
Barbara Kasey Smith is the writer of this article.
Source:
ABC News.Com