“It was so important to have color all the time.”
It wasn’t until she was 22 and in med school that she realized the sun wasn’t good for her. “Even before I got into dermatology, I started reducing my sun exposure,” she says.
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Realizing Something Wasn’t Quite Right
Fast forward 15 years: “I noticed a little mole on my leg,” she says. “It looked like someone took a pen and put a black dot on my leg. I have lots of moles, but I noticed this one because it was a little darker to me. It didn’t seem irregular, but it was new.”
She had a nagging feeling telling her that something wasn’t quite right. So she showed it to her colleagues, and no one thought it was anything to be concerned about. After she had her daughter, the dot was still there—as was Tanzi’s feeling that it didn’t belong, so she scheduled a biopsy.
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“It was a melanoma, and I was shocked,” she says. “I was thinking maybe it would be an atypical nevus [a benign mole that may resemble melanoma]. But it was already melanoma. I caught it in the very early stages and had it removed.” The tiny cancer ultimately left a two-inch scar on her leg.
A few years later, Tanzi found another melanoma and had it removed immediately. After all, she knows that the No. 1 risk factor for getting this form of skin cancer is having had it before.
The Tanning Bed-Skin Cancer Connection
Tanzi thinks her melanoma was most likely the result of her visits to the tanning bed. “It turns out that even one or two times in a tanning salon will increase your risk of melanoma,” she says. “We didn’t realize how bad the dangers were when tanning salons opened in the ‘80s. Now we know.”
Tanning beds expose you to ultraviolet (UV) radiation, and that increases your risk of skin cancer, including melanoma. According to the American Academy of Dermatology, people who have been exposed to radiation from indoor tanning are 59 percent more likely to develop melanoma than those who have never tanned indoors.
“I have lots of moles, but I noticed this one because it was a little darker to me.”
“There’s an epidemic of melanoma in young Caucasian women 25 to 45,” says Tanzi. “And all signs are pointing to tanning salons.” The FDA is pushing to ban tanning salons for minors, and Tanzi hopes that one day there will be a skull-and-crossbones symbol on each bed that says, “This machine could give you melanoma and it could kill you.” (The FDA currently requires indoor tanning devices to be labeled with a black-box warning stating they should not be used by people under age 18.)
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The Takeaway
After all she’s been through, Tanzi only asks two things of her patients and loved ones: Learn about prevention and detection.
You can help prevent melanoma by reducing sun exposure. That’s the easy part, thanks to high SPF sunscreens and sun-protective clothing. However, detection is a little more difficult, because of all the places on your body you can’t see.
“You have to take some responsibility,” she says. “You have to look at all of your skin when you’re getting in or out of the shower. You need to get an idea of what’s normal for you. The brain has a very good capacity for pattern recognition. So if all the sudden there’s a new spot, you notice it.”
That doesn’t mean you need to be paranoid. “I’m not asking you to look at every mole, just kind of get an overall picture,” says Tanzi. “Let your brain do its job. People have more power than they think. You can’t wait for annual check-ups, because what if you go to the dermatologist and then two weeks later you develop a melanoma? The difference between six months and a year of waiting to show your doctor could be the difference between you living and dying.”
Elizabeth Tanzi is the founder and director of Capital Laser Skin Care in Maryland, and is an assistant clinical professor in the department of dermatology at the George Washington University Medical Center.