Tag Archives: melanoma

But I Drink Red Wine…

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Not sure if many of you saw the recent study that shows an increased risk of melanoma for white wine drinkers. I tried to find the least technical article to break down what the study results actually say, and I think this one from Forbes does the trick. In summary, the writer of the article (who’s a professor of biomedical… Read more »

All skin tones need to watch for melanoma

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I just read a discouraging article that notes that patients with darker skin tones have a much worse chance of their melanoma becoming fatal. The article references a study performed by Case Western Reserve University (incidentally close to my hometown in Ohio and a very well-respected institution) that found that patients with black skin had the worst survival rates for melanoma…. Read more »

Scar at 20 Months

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20 month scar

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 »

Promising Research into a Cure for Melanoma

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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 »

Sun Exposure Myths

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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 »

Another Bullet Hole

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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 »

Start of the Summer and I Forgot SPF

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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 »

Surprising Causes of Skin Cancer

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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 »

More Good News Regarding Immunotherapy

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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 »

Sunscreen – What I Use After Melanoma

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In the comments of my rainy post, Ms. Mississippi Meow and I had an exchange about sunscreen. It made me think that others might have some questions on what sunscreen I use and my daily regime. First of all, let me tell you that once I received my melanoma diagnosis, I went out and bought all of those high SPF… Read more »