Coping With a Skin Cancer Diagnosis
- “Below Deck” reality TV star turned skin cancer advocate Ashling Lorger marks one year since she was diagnosed with melanoma, a potentially deadly type of skin cancer. She underwent treatment, and no signs of cancer appeared in follow-up scans recently.
- Melanoma is a type of skin cancer that starts in the same cells that give your skin, hair, and eyes their color.
- You’re most likely to find melanoma on sun-exposed skin areas like your face, neck, arms, and legs. However, you might also find them in your feet, eyes, and mouth.
- Lorger experienced “scan-xiety,” which is the feeling of anxiety cancer patients experience amid looming scans or while awaiting scan results during her journey.
- Psychiatrist Dr. Samantha Boardman recommends that cancer patients do things to distract themselves from their scans. This may include exercising, listening to music, participating in some form of art, or whatever brings them joy and helps them pass the time.
“Below Deck” star Ashling Lorger celebrated a milestone this year by marking a year since she was diagnosed with melanoma, a potentially deadly form of skin cancer. The reality TV star turned skin cancer advocate noted the moment on social media, adding that it took “a lot of courage to share.”
“I’m proud to share this with you all,” Lorger said.
Read MoreView this post on Instagram“12 months since I was diagnosed with melanoma and underwent two margin procedures, three skin checks, and two additional biopsies – which were thankfully negative,” Lorger continued in her social media post.
Lorger was diagnosed with melanoma at 27. Melanoma is a type of skin cancer that starts in the same cells that give your skin, hair, and eyes their color. Her father was also diagnosed with this type of cancer.
She’s a popular cast member on the Bravo TV show “Below Deck.” The show is about a crew working on a multimillion-dollar yacht sailing the Nordic Seas in and around Iceland and the Northern Atlantic.
Lorger, who turns 32 this year, explained while undergoing treatment and follow-up checks for her skin cancer diagnosis, she experienced fear and anxiety. This worrisome feeling is normal for patients, especially when awaiting test results.
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“The anxiety and fear I experienced during these appointments were significant,” she said.
Lorger also cautioned people aspiring for a golden tan, which heightens skin cancer risks.
“Tanning is not healthy or beautiful. It’s not worth the wrinkles, the scars, let alone your life. If you want to avoid a potential melanoma diagnosis, sun protection is absolutely vital,” Lorger said.
More Resources on Skin Cancer and Tanning
How to Cope with Anxiety Surrounding Scans
Larger highlighted not only words of wisdom regarding skin cancer but also shed light on stages of the cancer journey deeply affecting patients—scan anxiety.
“Scan anxiety is unbelievably stressful,” Dr. Samantha Boardman, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine, told SurvivorNet.
“Probably one of the best antidotes that I think psychology can offer patients is to experience flow,” which Boardman means to lose a sense of time.
WATCH: Coping Scan Anxiety.
Her advice to help manage your anxiety is to exercise, participate in some form of art, listen to music, or do an activity you enjoy that takes your mind away from potential scan results.
A straightforward exercise starts with drawing four columns on a piece of paper. “I’ll ask patients to write down what I don’t know, what I do know, what I can’t control, and what I can control,” she said. From there, “a helpful way to dial down their anxiety” involves “trying to move as many items as possible into what they know and can control.”
Visually mapping this process out on paper can also help patients feel more in control of their circumstances. By putting down the anxieties bouncing around in a person’s brain, patients are encouraged to feel like they have power over the challenges they face.
“How can we experience flow in our daily lives? It’s usually in some form of a hobby, something we just do because we love doing it,” Dr. Boardman said. “I really encourage patients to find and experience something that they can do that gives them flow. It might be baking, it might be gardening, it might even be doing some housework. They are so immersed in that experience that they’re not thinking about anything else.”
Understanding Melanomas
The main types of skin cancer include basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and melanoma. Melanoma also causes the most skin cancer deaths, according to the National Cancer Institute.
Changes to a mole you’ve had for a while or a new growth on your skin could be signs of melanoma, according to SurvivorNet’s experts. You’ll want to watch them and tell your doctor about any changes you notice.
You’re most likely to find melanoma on sun-exposed skin areas like your face, neck, arms, and legs. Surprisingly, you might also find them in other places as well, like:
- The palms of your hands or soles of your feet
- On your eyes or mouth
- Under your nails
WATCH: How do you perform a skin check using the ABCDEs?
SurvivorNet experts recommend avoiding unprotected sun exposure because ultraviolet (UV) radiation can lead to melanoma. Tanning beds pose ultraviolet radiation risks for skin cancer and should be avoided. Many dermatologists recommend using spray tans to reduce the risk of melanoma skin cancer.
SurvivorNet’s medical experts say the most important thing to look for when finding melanoma is a new spot on your skin or a spot changing in size, shape, or color.
Treatment options for melanoma include targeted therapy and immunotherapy, which give people a better chance of living a long and healthy life than ever before. If you’re diagnosed with melanoma, there’s a good chance surgery will be the treatment your doctor recommends.
Cancer removal usually leads to a cure in the early stages of the disease. After surgery, the removed tissue and lymph nodes are examined to measure the melanoma and determine if it has clear margins. Clear margins mean the cells around the area of tissue that was removed don’t contain any melanoma. When no cancer cells are left around the removed area, your cancer is less likely to return.
For melanoma patients who need additional treatment after surgery, they are likely to receive adjuvant therapy (treatments administered after surgery). Adjuvant therapy is designed to improve outcomes and decrease the risk of recurrence. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved some adjuvant therapy treatments for melanoma, which include:
- Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) is an immunotherapy that helps the immune system attack and kill cancer cells. It is a PD1 inhibitor drug that works by blocking the PD1 pathway used by cancer cells to hide from the immune system.
- Nivolumab (Opdivo) – Another form of immunotherapy, nivolumab is a PD1 inhibitor that works similarly to pembrolizumab.
- Dabrafenib (Tafinlar) and trametinib (Mekinist) combination – This is a targeted therapy combo for patients with a BRAF V600E/K mutation fueling their cancer. About 50% of melanomas have BRAF mutations.
- Ipilimumab (Yervoy)—This medication is also an immunotherapy. It works by blocking CTLA4 protein, which is found normally on T-cells. This keeps immune cells alert to fight off cancer cells and stop their growth.
- Interferon alpha (FDA-approved, but no longer recommended by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Melanoma Panel.)
“When it comes to melanoma, if you use sunscreen, there is this great study that came out of Australia that if patients used sunscreen consistently over a period of 10 years, they were actually able to reduce their risk for melanoma by 50%,” Dana-Farber Cancer Institute dermatologist Dr. Cecilia Larocca tells SurvivorNet.
Concerns Over Tanning
Lorger told 7 News in Australia that tanning culture and the pressures of being on television led to risky tanning.
Spending lots of time in the sun can damage the skin in the form of sunburns that leave the skin red and peeling. Excessive UV rays can also lead to skin cancer.
Tanning may occur outdoors or in tanning beds, which pose equal health risks.
According to the FDA, indoor tanning beds emit a type of UV ray, and UV exposure can increase the risk of skin cancer. (The sun also emits a type of UV ray.)
The National Center for Biotechnology Information published a 2011 study by Yale Cancer Center researchers examining indoor tanning and the risk of early-onset basal cell carcinoma, and it concluded that tanning beds were a “strong risk factor.
The study’s researchers said young people who tanned indoors had a 69% increased risk of early-onset BCC.
Indoor tanning was strikingly common in our study of young skin cancer patients, especially in women, which may partially explain why 70% of early-onset BCCs occur in females, a researcher Susan T. Mayne said to Yale Daily News.
Meanwhile, the American Academy of Dermatology says that just one indoor tanning session can increase the risk of melanoma by 20% and squamous cell carcinoma by 67%. A study published recently in Cancer, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, suggests that banning tanning beds among minors would prevent thousands of cases of melanoma in adolescents and save millions of dollars in healthcare costs.
Studies have shown that exposure to tanning beds increases the risk of skin and ocular cancer, says Dr. Lynn A. Cornelius, chief of the Division of Dermatology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. It also induces changes that lead to premature skin aging.
Questions to Ask Your Doctor
If you are diagnosed with skin cancer, you may have some questions for your doctor. SurvivorNet suggests some of the following to help you on your cancer journey.
- What type of skin cancer do I have?
- What treatment options exist for my type of melanoma?
- Will insurance cover this treatment?
- Would treatment through a clinical trial make sense for me?
- What resources exist to help manage my anxiety because of this diagnosis?
Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.
