Skin cancer rates escalating
Sun exposure, heredity two main causes
Flint - Anthony Beaugard never looks over his shoulder to see how close death can come.
He just touches the bald spot on the back of his head, and he knows.
Beaugard, 41, survived skin cancer on the scalp in 2004 and cancer of the parotid, or salivary, gland in 2006.
"Once you get cancer it kind of makes you want to give up. It was rough but I'm still here," Beaugard, who was recently hired into the Flint Truck Assembly Plant and also works as a Job Corps resident assistant.
"It's hard to talk about a lot of the things you go through in life. But I think educating people and giving them hope is what I should be doing from now on."
Spreading the word could be more important than ever. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Michigan ranks 11th for sunburn - one of the biggest risk factors for skin cancer. Nearly half of all Michigan adults gets sunburned at least once every summer.
Skin cancer may be nothing new under the summer sun - but dermatologists say an overall explosion in skin cancer rates is serious cause for alarm.
"I remove an average 11 cancers a day at my practice alone. So it's pretty obvious to me it's out of control," said Dr. Kimball Silverton, a Grand Blanc dermatologist on staff at Genesys Regional Medical Center.
The two main causes: Heredity and sun exposure, which is worsening due to the thinning ozone layer allowing more harmful UV rays to get through.
According to the American Academy of Dermatology, one out of five people will develop some form of skin cancer. Indoor tanning is even worse: 75 percent of tanning salon patrons will develop skin cancer.
"At the turn of the century, one person in 1,700 developed malignant melanomas. Of kids born in 2000, one in 50 will. And if that melanoma goes deeper than one millimeter, most will die within five years," said Silverton.
"Many other types that are more common won't necessarily kill you but they'll eat through your eyeball or ear and the treatment is cutting it out, plain and simple."
Skin cancer most commonly affects the fair-skinned. But cancer doesn't follow rules and no one is exempt, said Silverton.
Beaugard, a young African-American with a full head of hair, didn't at all fit the profile for a scalp melanoma. In fact, it took nearly a year for anyone to realize the small bump on his head was more than just an annoying ingrown hair.
"He had a habit of messing with it, trying to squeeze it and open it up. I think somewhere down the line he'd spoken to a doctor but they weren't too concerned," said Shirley Jackson, Beaugard's mother.
"Then, it started growing and bleeding...I was the one who took the call when the test results came in. You really don't prepare for something like that. You just pray for the best."
Beaugard was one of the lucky ones.
According to a recent study at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, people with scalp or neck melanomas die at nearly twice the rate of those with skin melanomas anywhere else on the body.
The study, funded in part by the National Cancer Institute, analyzed 51,704 cases of skin cancer. Melanomas on the scalp and neck tend to be thicker, were more likely to be ulcerated and more often spread to the lymph nodes.
The findings aren't surprising, said Silverton. "You naturally lose 10,000 cells off your face every day. They're pretty darn small. Could one of those break off and spread? Absolutely," Silverton said.
In Beaugard's case, it showed up two years later as a painful lump near his ear, in what turned out to be his salivary gland.
"That time it nearly killed me. I was at the end, dehydrated, with a tubein my chest for 11 months. I had no taste for almost a year and lost 100 pound," he said. "To this day I really can't taste sweets and my hair won't grow back good on the right side."
Today, it's rare to see Beaugard outdoors without a ball cap firmly tucked on his head.
"I'm always telling people they should wear a hat when they're outdoors but they don't pay much attention. But once I tell them my story and why I feel that way, you see them get a little interested," he said, chuckling.
The best defenses are early detection and sun protection - especially in summer when people spend more time outdoors.
"Even if your're not getting burned, if you're getting a tan, it's pretty much the same wavelengths of light that hurt your DNA and give you skin cancer," said North Dakota plastic surgeon Dr. Ahmed Abdullah, founder of LexLi, a line of aloe-based sun protection products.
A Sun Protection Factor, or SPF, of 4 provides about 50 percent protection, Abdullah said, while SPF 15 offers about 93 percent protection. SPF 30 provides about 97 percent.
"The ideal number would be 15, or 30 if you're really fair (complexioned). Anything after that is not really giving you anything more," said Abdullah.
Just as important is frequent application. A sunscreen is absorbed into the skin and lasts about two hours. A sun block sits on the surface of the skin and comes off in water.
Skin cancer facts
- 1 in 5 Americans will develop some form of skin cancer.
- 75 percent of tanning bed users will develop skin cancer.
- 1 in 50 children born in 2000 will develop a malignant melanoma.
- Most sun damage linked to skin cancer occurs in the first 18 years of life.
- 47.9 percent of Michigan adults will get sunburned at least once each summer, ranking 11th in the nation.
- Those with scalp or neck melanomas are almost twice as likely to die as those with melanomas found anywhere else on the body.
Sources: American Academy of Dermatology and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention