Catching skin cancer early improves survival chances
Janelle Klubertanz, a registered nurse with Prevea Health’s Plastic Surgery & Rejuvenation Center, tells her patients that melanoma doesn’t have to be a death sentence. Of course, any health professional can tell a patient that.
Klubertanz, a six-year melanoma survivor, can speak from first-hand knowledge.
“My experience with melanoma, as a nurse, [was] that I was going to die,” says Klubertanz when remembering her primary care physician’s diagnosis of malignant melanoma. “[They said] I needed to see someone tomorrow. I was scared. But it doesn’t have to be a death sentence.”
That’s especially true if it is caught early; experts agree that being aware of any changes in the skin is key when it comes to detecting skin cancer.
“We tell our patients: if it doesn’t look right or feel right, it should be looked at,” says the 28-year-old Klubertanz, explaining that the Plastic Surgery & Rejuvenation Center frequently sees skin cancer patients who need surgery.
In Klubertanz’s case, it was irritation that prompted her to have the mole removed.
“[It] was annoying – a mole that was very itchy. It itched more in the sun. It was driving me nuts,” Klubertanz says of the smaller-than-a-pencil-eraser mole she had removed from her upper thigh. “I knew the signs: irregular, dark; this was non-obvious. I got it taken off because it was itching.”
While the resulting outpatient surgery was a simple process, Klubertanz’s follow-up with an oncologist was another eye-opening experience.
“The oncologist said basically if I had left it for another six months, it would have been more serious; it probably would have metastasized,” she says.
The speed at which melanoma can spread to other vital organs is the main reason for its lethal reputation.
“The most deadly (form of skin cancer) is melanoma,” says Nancy Davis, a medical oncologist at Aurora BayCare Medical Center’s Vince Lombardi Cancer Clinic.