Save the Date: Portland Melanoma Walk, May 11

I am thrilled to announce that I am coordinating the 2nd Annual Portland Melanoma Walk! In it's inaugural year, the event raised over $15,000 for AIM at Melanoma. This year, the event will be kicking off at Wallace Park in NW Portland on Saturday, May 11, 2013. We've still got quite a bit more planning to do, but mark your calendars now! Here are a few different ways you can get involved:

1. Register for the walk. It's free. Plus, you get a t-shirt.
2. Make a donation. Can't make it? Don't live in Oregon? You can still support us! I'm hoping to raise at least $1,000 on my personal fundraising page. Every little bit helps. If you're a small business owner, you can also contact me for sponsorship and in-kind donation opportunities. Tax deductions, warm fuzzy feelings, etc. :)
3. Create your own fundraising page. There will be amazing prizes for participants who help us raise money!
4. Volunteer. If you live in the Portland area, I'm looking for several day-of volunteers. Contact me if you'd like more information about volunteering.

Share this widely with friends and family! Here are a few reasons why:

• Melanoma is the most deadly type of skin cancer.
• Every eight minutes, someone in the United States will be given a melanoma diagnosis and every hour someone will die from the disease.
• Melanoma is the fastest growing cancer in the United States and worldwide.
• Melanoma is the most common form of cancer in young adults 25-29 and the second most common cancer in young adults 15-29 years old.
• If caught in the early stages, melanoma is very treatable with a survival rate of nearly 100%. If untreated or allowed to spread, there is no known treatment or cure. Unfortunately, melanoma metastasis is very unpredictable and it often spreads quickly.
• The rate of new melanoma diagnoses was 36% higher in Oregon than the national average from 2002-2006 and was the 4th highest in the U.S. An estimated 1,220 state residents were diagnosed with melanoma in 2009.

The man tan

Jake Gibb, Olympic beach volleyball player is
a melanoma and testicular cancer survivor.

When I was in college, still an avid tanning bed user, my girlfriends and I used to giggle every time we saw a guy at a tanning salon. Call me old fashioned, but I've always preferred my men to be more rugged and outdoorsy. If a guy is more high maintenance than me (think waxed chest and designer denim)--I'll pass.

Come to find out, many of my guy friends have been to a tanning salon. And many of the ones who haven't are notorious for shunning sunscreen when they spend time outdoors. While I spend most of my time educating young women about the dangers of UV radiation, I wanted to take a moment to remind you: guys get skin cancer, too. Men are actually more likely to be diagnosed with melanoma than women.

To quote a U.S. News article from a few years back:

"Why men? 'Part of it is because men tend to get more [ultraviolet] exposure because of their jobs, part of it is that they use sunscreen less, and part of it is later detection,' says Barbara Gilchrest, chair of the dermatology department at Boston University. Many of her male melanoma patients, she says, come in only after being nagged by family members. Forty-seven percent of men report they never use sunscreen, one survey found. That's part of the reason, no doubt, that researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say men have higher rates of sunburn."

I hate, hate, HATE to stereotype, but so many guys I know are (a) too cool to wear sunscreen or (b) totally invincible and don't need to go see a dermatologist--or so they think. Even if you do stay out of the sun, be careful that you don't fall into the latter category. Make skin checks part of your regular routine, especially as you age. I imagine that checking your back in the mirror every so often is less of a pain than an annual colonoscopy. There are undoubtedly people in this world who care about you, so please take care of yourself.

Steve Hock, father of these two, passed
away from melanoma on July 16, 2012.
Men: You are not immune.

Does this look like a cancer patient to you?

May is Melanoma Awareness Month. Please help spread the word by sharing this post with your friends and family. 

Earlier this week, my friend Rachael, the brains behind the Glenna Kohl Fund for Hope's social media outreach, posted this picture on Facebook of Glenna on her graduation day. If you're part of the melanoma club, you may already be familiar with Glenna's story (if not, you can read up on Cosmo). Long story short: this photo was taken mere months before Glenna found out she had stage III melanoma. She died four years later at age 26.

The other day, I was out having a drink with a friend of mine when I mentioned the Portland Melanoma Walk.

"Oh yeah, you had melanoma, right? Well, if your going to get cancer, at least it's just skin cancer, right?"

I love my friend. She is a very intelligent young woman, but in this instance she was all wrong. This is an uphill battle that many of us early-stage melanoma survivors face. Superficially, it may look like we just had to have a funky mole removed, and then things were golden again. But let me remind you that I had the very same type of cancer Glenna had, and she died. This vibrant, beautiful, fun-loving girl died because of skin cancer.

Sometimes I look back at pictures of myself over the holidays in 2009. I had just had my mole biopsied, and was completely unaware that there was anything malignant growing on my body. Unless you looked at my skin cells under a microscope, you would have had no idea that there was anything wrong with me. You can look healthy and happy but still be at risk for developing a deadly disease. Just look at Glenna on her graduation day. Does she look like your stereotypical "cancer patient"? Maybe that's part of the reason why melanoma is so dangerous. It's sneaky and ruthless.

So, two takeaway messages for this lovely Thursday evening:

1. Don't ever underestimate the dangers of skin cancer. Just last week, at the melanoma walk, I met friends and family members of three more individuals who lost their lives to melanoma.
2. No one knows your body like you do (OK, except for maybe your significant other). So check yourself out in the mirror. (Just don't take creepy pictures of yourself and post them on Facebook.) Notice if anything changes or looks suspicious. If so, go talk to your derm. It's likely nothing, but you'll thank me if it's not.

Portland's first AIM at Melanoma 5k makes local news

May is Melanoma Awareness Month. Please help spread the word by sharing this post with your friends and family. 
 


Yes, that's yours truly, out of breath and sweaty, but still speaking out about the dangers of melanoma on Fox 12 Oregon. Thank you to everyone who sponsored me in Portland's first AIM at Melanoma 5k, including:

• Tim Slavin
• Kevin Posch
• Mark Williams
• Suzanne DeVaney-Wilkes (thanks, Mom)
• Jessica Giles
• Skin Zen Acupuncture & Esthetics
• Liz Carr
• Barbara Burbank

An extra special thank you to my wonderful friend Liz Carr who thought she was going to be walking on Saturday morning, but ended up jogging with me just because she is an amazing friend (and I am a huge pain in the ass.)

I was so impressed by the turnout and the high caliber of sponsors we had for the event. Emily Clay deserves a huge hug for organizing everyone. She and several others organized this walk in remembrance of their good friend Sarah Bach who lost her battle to melanoma at age 42 in 2011. It was incredibly difficult for me to hear the stories from people who have lost loved ones to this disease, but also comforting to know that we're all in this together.

Looking forward making things even bigger and better next year.

3-year-old me and loving the skin you were born in

May is Melanoma Awareness Month. Please help spread the word by sharing this post with your friends and family. 

Little me, happily oblivious of skin cancer.

Last week, AIM at Melanoma shared this fantastic new American Academy of Dermatology PSA on their twitter feed (kudos to whoever manages that by the way--you always write me back!) Much as I love bashing on tanning beds, I love this PSA because it digs a little deeper than that. It makes you think: at what point did I look at my natural skin color and start to think, "This is unacceptable. You are ugly"? Was it when kids on my basketball team started giving me a hard time for baring my pasty white legs in a pair of shorts, when I went to the Clinique counter for the first time and realized even alabaster made my face look dirty, or when I flipped through a Delia's catalog and realized none of the models looked like me?

Yes, it was the tanning beds fault that I got skin cancer. Yes, it was my fault that I went to the tanning beds. But whose fault is it that I felt like I needed to start tanning in the first place? Why wasn't my natural skin color good enough for me? Studies have shown that people are more attracted to others who have tan skin than those who don't. Just a few generations ago, however, folks felt the opposite. I hate to think that if I have a daughter she will be faced with the same pressures I have been: bleach this, tan that, buy this, don't buy that. Does it ever end? As a species, we can be pretty self destructive.

Although melanoma is depressing, and my rants about tanning are, too, I purposefully created this blog to celebrate pale being pretty. As a professional writer and a perfectionist, I agonized for days over how I should "label" my writings. "You're writing about tanning," my friends said, "The name of your blog should have something to do with tanning." But I held firm. This blog was to be more than just about tanning. It's about me learning how to embrace the skin I was born in, and to share that journey with others. I think that's why this PSA in particular resonated with me so clearly. On that note, please check out this lovely short video, and make sure you share it with all your friends!

Portland's first AIM at Melanoma walk, May 12

As many of you know, I had surgery to remove an early-stage melanoma in 2010. Since then, I've become an advocate for skin cancer prevention and early detection. I've made quite a few friends along the way--many of whom have participated in melanoma walks and other large fundraisers all over the country. The whole time, I've thought to myself, Wouldn't it be cool if there was a melanoma walk in Portland, Oregon? Well, guess what? This year, there is! It's happening Saturday, May 12, 2012.

Needless to say, I'm thrilled that little 'ole Portland is getting its own melanoma walk, so I've been emailing with walk's organizer. Since it's the first year, there's still a lot of work that needs to be done. If you live in Oregon or Southwest Washington, please join us on May 12 and share the event with your friends and family (the U of O duck will be there, so bring the kids, too!) Unlike other 5k races I've been doing lately, there's no fee to sign up, although you're more than welcome to make a donation. Not local? Consider sponsoring me! Even $10--the cost of one session in a tanning bed--would do wonders.