Aiden McKay, a British man, has bee diagnosed with stage four melanoma. He said that the news caused his life, as well as the lives of his wife and kids, to come crashing down around him.
He first received a diagnosis of skin cancer in 2019 and underwent treatment, which was apparently successful. But then in 2022, the cancer returned—this time to his lungs and his brain.
He blames his condition on the years he spent outdoors at a child in the years before sunblock was commonly used, when he lived on a farm. He recalls that his summertime chores such as shucking corn and bailing hay were all done without protection, and getting a deep sunburn was just an expected part of life. The only treatment they had to hand was calamine lotion.
McKay says that he wished he had known about the risks of skin cancer when he was young, and how he might have taken steps to avoid it. He advises younger people to be sure to wear a hat and sunscreen. For older people, he advises getting new or changing skin blemishes seen to straightaway. He originally thought his lesions were blood blisters or bug bites, and didn’t pay them sufficient attention for eight weeks. Those weeks, he said, made the difference between stage one-or-two and stage four cancer.
McKay’s story is getting renewed attention as the cancer research and awareness group Melanoma Focus has published research showing that even a single bad sunburn in a person’s childhood or adolescence more than doubles an individual’s risk of developing melanoma in later life.
The Balmoral Show, an annual agricultural event for farmers, has a new feature this year: fake moles. A new campaign in Britain from The Agri Rural Health Forum Action Center is offering farmers temporary “melanoma tattoos” in an effort to raise awareness of skin cancer risk among agriculturalists and help farmers spot troubling lesions before they progress to a life-threatening stage.