Malenoma

[OULobo]

I think I have a high risk of skin cancer and wondered if anyone has any stats about risk factors and occurance rates. I'm in a bit of a huff about it because I match all the risk factors for malignant malinoma and I would like to know if I'm justified in my worry or just paranoid.

Risk factors I match:

My father had a malignant malinoma that was caught in level 1.
He later died of other types of cancer.
I am fair skinned, blonde hair, blue eyes and covered in moles.
I had a few bad sun burns as a child and worked 3 years as a life guard.
I currently wear sunscreen when in the direct sun for any time longer than 45min. and I never go tanning.

What do you think? High risk? Am I doing everything I can to avoid the big skin C?

 

[shesulsa]

OULobo, my mother was diagnosed with a malignant melanoma this past year. I too am very fair skinned, green eyes, dark blonde hair and am also covered in moles (connect the dots!).

You are at high risk, however, it sounds like you are taking good precautions according to the orders I've received from the skin doctor that removed the melanoma from my mother's arm. We are genetically at higher risk because it's in the family.

Removal upon discovery of the offending lesion - as I understand it - is the key to being cured of this disease.

I don't have any statistics as to recurrence after that, nor toward the risk of developing other cancers after having MM because I see conflicts in the data I find on the subject.

Do you take Vit E? Eat berries? Other anti-oxidant and cancer preventative dietary measures?

 

[OULobo]

Thanks for the reply, it looks like we are in the same boat. My research comes up with the same thing, different stories from different doctors, but all saying wear your sun screen and stay out of the sun. The only things I do to keep up on antioxidants and diet is drink extra water, take a daily centrum and I do eat a ton of blue and strawberries. Are those recommendations? I haven't seen anything that shows anti-skin-cancer dietary suggestions.

 

[shesulsa]

Yeah, berries (especially blue) are very high in anti-oxidants which are good to prevent all types of cancer. One thing I've learned from all the Big C patients in my family history, is that if even one person get it, you are at higher risk to develop one form of cancer or another. My mother, e.g., is one of nine siblings to survive beyond the age of two years. Of those, she is the only one still living and only one of these siblings was never diagnosed with cancer. Never the same kind, either. Her father and mother both had cancer but did not die from it. My father died of cancer, his brother, one sister also. I understand, but am not sure, that his father died of alcoholism, but had cancer as well.

*sigh*

...gotta go eat some more blueberries now...

 

[Spud]

I'd get a head to toe exam from a dermatologist every year and sooner if anything changes.

Sounds like you are extremely high risk.

 

[OULobo]

Yeah, berries (especially blue) are very high in anti-oxidants which are good to prevent all types of cancer. One thing I've learned from all the Big C patients in my family history, is that if even one person get it, you are at higher risk to develop one form of cancer or another. My mother, e.g., is one of nine siblings to survive beyond the age of two years. Of those, she is the only one still living and only one of these siblings was never diagnosed with cancer. Never the same kind, either. Her father and mother both had cancer but did not die from it. My father died of cancer, his brother, one sister also. I understand, but am not sure, that his father died of alcoholism, but had cancer as well.

*sigh*

...gotta go eat some more blueberries now...

Wow, looks like you have it coming from both sides of the family. . . and all other sides for that matter. Good luck. My father had carcinoma and malinoma, bladder cancer and that spread to the liver. There isn't any other tracible cancer in his family (his mother died at 93 of a stroke, his only uncle had a heart attack in his 60s, didn't know his father). Dad was about as high risk in lifestyle as you can get. Tanned into his 50s, never with any protection; smoked into his 50s, until diagnosed; drank 'till he died, at levels considered alcoholic by some; and worked in environments that were saturated by moderate carcinogens like benzene. Mom, on the other hand, doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, would burst in to flames before she tans and has no real family history of cancer, despite the fact that many tried about as hard as you can to catch it. So I'm hoping it isn't as much a family trait as an isolated case of a high risk cancer lifestyle in my Pops.