FAIRMONT — Terry Rooney visited a dermatologist last November for one problem but learned she had a melanoma on her arm instead.
“I was going for something else but we got to talking a bit, and I was showing her a spot on my arm,” said Rooney, of Morgantown. “She looked at it and she goes, ‘That looks suspicious.’ She biopsied it and it came back as melanoma.
“That was sort of scary.”
But, as her dermatologist, Dr. Beth Santmyire-Rosenberger points out, if caught and treated early, melanoma, the rarest and most dangerous of all skin cancers, has a five-year-plus survival rate of at least 99 percent.
“It’s very high,” said Santmyire-Rosenberger of Appalachian Spring Dermatology in Fairmont. “You never say 100 percent anything in the medical profession, but it’s really good.”
Santmyire-Rosenberger will be screening patients for skin cancers from 6 to 10 a.m. May 12 in the lobby of Fairmont General Hospital during a multiphasic event, which accounts for the early hours.
Although Santmyire-Rosenberger noted that she holds screenings frequently throughout the community, May is Skin Cancer Awareness Month.
However, for Santmyire-Rosenberger, a dermatologist who was diagnosed with a basal cell carcinoma — the least harmful kind — at the age of 30, every month is skin cancer awareness month.
She advises several steps to follow in order to avoid skin cancer. In addition to avoiding tanning beds and taking precautions in the sun, such as using sunscreen and protective clothing, she also recommends that people check themselves over once a month.
“My birthday is the 22nd of the month, so you can pick a day of the month — a birthday, a date — and check your skin over well once a month,” Santmyire-Rosenberger said.
And although some skin cancer spots are typically darker in color, like many people expect, “the majority of skin cancers aren’t melanoma. It’s a red sore spot that won’t heal up. Often, people come in and say, ‘I have this pimple that didn’t go away.’ It’s not always brown, which is what a lot of people think.”
At least 10 times a day in her practice, Santmyire-Rosenberger discusses a precancerous or cancerous spot with a patient, she noted.
And she can speak from a place of experience. A few years ago, Santmyire-Rosenberger had a bump in her hairline. She showed it to several other dermatologists, none of whom found it suspicious.
“Then one day I was driving, and it started bleeding for no reason,” she said. “So something that bleeds easily is suspicious. I had it biopsied and it was a basal cell carcinoma.”
That’s the type of skin cancer that accounts for 80 percent of skin cancers, and while usually not life threatening, people should have them removed, she said.
“People will have one on the nose, and it will eat clear through to the inside of the nose,” she said. “They can be destructive and scarring and deforming if not removed, and they just keep getting bigger and bigger.”
As for melanoma, people can use the alphabetical A-B-C-D-E method of detection: A for asymmetry, B for irregular border, C for multiple colors, D for diameter bigger than a pencil eraser, and the latest letter to be added to the mix, E for evolving, or “something that is growing or changing,” Santmyire-Rosenberger said.
When people come to the free, public screenings, Santmyire-Rosenberger cannot do a full body check, although especially in nice weather, she generally can look at the typically troublesome spots: men’s backs and the backs of women’s legs, in addition to faces, necks and behind the ears.
“The summer is great, because people wear shorts and most men don’t mind lifting their shirts,” she said. “And if there are areas they don’t want exposed in public, I invite them to come to my office.”
One man, a truck driver passing through the area, attended one of Santmyire-Rosenberger’s screenings, and she diagnosed a basal cell carcinoma. She asked him to schedule an appointment in her office, and when he finally did, the doctor saw that he had another suspicious spot on his back. That one turned out to be a melanoma.
“We ended up going back and cutting the rest of it out,” Santmyire-Rosenberger said.
The man did not require chemotherapy, as some advanced cases do.
“Sometimes, people do need chemo, but for most skin cancers, a surgical incision and taking out a large spot is curative,” she said. “But sometimes, if it’s advanced, someone might have to have lymph nodes taken out and if it’s really advanced, chemotherapy is performed.”
For Rooney, an outpatient office procedure was all it took to get rid of her melanoma. “It’s a big scar,” she said. “It’s probably 3 inches long.”
Rooney never sunbathed but did go swimming as a child.
“I got a couple sunburns when I was younger and maybe a few when I was a teenager, but I wasn’t a sun worshipper. That’s something I never did.”
E-mail Mary Wade Burnside at mwburnside@timeswv.com.
In Today's TWV
April 29, 2007
Skin cancer: It pays to be aware
Survival rates high for most-dangerous forms when caught early
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