Cancerwise

I’ve always had very fair skin and light-colored eyes. Over the years, I’ve had plenty of sun exposure, too — first as a geophysicist working outdoors and later as a swim mom spending hours on the pool deck. I knew I was at higher risk for skin cancer. Even so, I never imagined that one day I’d be diagnosed with stage IV melanoma — or that the only place it would be found was in my brain. 

My diagnosis came in March 2016. I went to the emergency room because I wasn’t thinking clearly and couldn’t explain why. Scans showed more than a dozen tumors in my brain. Two were large enough to affect my thinking. The rest just appeared as bright spots on the imaging.  

Hearing the words “stage IV metastatic melanoma” was terrifying, especially knowing how serious brain involvement could be. But I’d been volunteering at MD Anderson for many years by then, including in the Ben Love/El Paso Corporation Melanoma and Skin Center. So, I knew exactly where I was going for my melanoma treatment.