It’s back-to-school time for a lot of families here in the United States and my Facebook feed is stuffed full of images of friends’ children all decked out for the first day of school. I have no children and generally scroll past these images thinking to myself “how the hell did my friends get so old that they could have… Read more »
My news feed lit up today with a bunch of links talking about research done by a German and Israeli team showing how skin cancer cells develop and spread. This important research will hopefully show how skin cancer cells spread throughout the body. As you already know, melanoma is one of the deadliest types of cancer once it has spread… Read more »
There was a recent article on msn.com that talked about myths regarding sun exposure. Although we may think we know everything there is to know about protecting yourself from harmful sun exposure, it’s still good to have a reminder. Let’s start with the first, and to my mind, obvious. How many of you remember trying to get a base tan… Read more »
I just returned from a trip to the Pacific Northwest. As mentioned in a previous post, it’s hot in Austin in the summer and I was looking to take a break from the heat this summer. Plus, Washington was one of the last 6 states I had left to visit. So Seattle seemed to fit the bill in more ways… Read more »
Well, I had my every-6-months appointment with the dermatologist today. As you can guess from the title of this post, I had another piece of my skin cut off for biopsy. You see, I’ve had this…thing…on my back. It popped up a little less than a month ago and I first noticed it while struggling to put lotion on my back…. Read more »
Apologies if you’re not a basketball fan (and particularly if you’re a Golden State Warriors fan), you may want to skip this post… Although I now live in Austin, I was born and raised in Northern Ohio. If you’re a fan of professional basketball in the United States, you know that the Cleveland Cavaliers finally broke the drought of sports… Read more »
Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (knowns as the CDC, a U.S. national public health institute) conducted a survey on sunscreen usage. The results were alarming, especially for someone who has battled melanoma and would hate to see anyone else have to go through the process. Only 14.3% of men and 29.9% of women reported regularly using… Read more »
It’s June, and here in Austin, that means that the summer time temperatures are climbing. We had a lot of rain over the past few weeks; but the forecast for the next 15 days are full of sun icons and 90 degree temperatures. As I walked to work today, I suddenly realized that I did not remember to put sunscreen… Read more »
I was clicking around on the internet and was on a story that talked about how cheap drugstore brands are more effective at helping aging skin look younger than the expensive skin care lotions (don’t judge, you know you want to read that article too), when I saw a sidebar with the story headline “Surprising Causes of Skin Cancer“. Of course,… Read more »
I’ve posted a few times regarding immunotherapy (both its historical context as well as newer attempts using microneedles). I just came across another article that shows promise in treating melanoma with targeted and personalized melanoma cancer vaccines, using the patients’ own immune system to help combat the disease. In the article, two melanoma patients whose cancer had metastasized to the… Read more »