The woman’s breast tumor was melanoma but had no moles

We have all been taught melanoma —The most deadly form of skin cancer — sends a warning signal before it penetrates deeper and spreads. It’s important to monitor moles that are growing, changing color, or otherwise evolving.

But what if there is no mole to signal the threat?

That’s what happened to Amanda Hunt, a lawyer who was stunned to find a lump in her chest. It turned out to be a melanoma tumor that had spread to her lungs and many other parts of the body.

Still, she never had skin spots diagnosed with melanoma — a rare but possible scenario, the doctor said.

“I didn’t think this was possible until this happened to me,” said Hunt, 39, who lives in Titusville, Florida, today.

“(I thought) you have a mole on your skin or something is changing, you go to a dermatologist, hopefully they catch it fast enough to get rid of it all, and you’re safe … So I took a little time to wrap and wondered what it really meant, and when it sank, I was afraid. ”

Relation

Dr. Zeynep Eroglu, a Hunts oncologist at the Mofit Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, considers about 3% of melanomas to be “melanomas of unknown origin.”

Melanoma is found only after it has already spread to the lymph nodes, subcutaneous tissue, or organs such as the lungs and liver, Eroglu added.

Exposure to UV light is sacrificed

As a fair-skinned kid who grew up in Florida and spends the summer poolside and on the beach, Hunt Tan many times As a girl. She remembered using sunscreen, but didn’t reapply it.

Later, around the age of 18, Hunt began using tanning beds and continued to practice them until his early thirties, sometimes four times a week for many years.

Her first skin cancer brush came in 2011 when she noticed spots on her upper arm that looked like mosquito bites. She visited a dermatologist when it did not disappear, became scaly, and began to bleed. Diagnosis: Basal cell carcinomaA very common skin cancer that is usually non-life-threatening.

It was removed and Hunt started going to annual skin checks from that point on.

In May 2020, she was preparing to sleep in bed. It was when she reached for the cover and her hand happened to brush her right chest. She felt a lump.

Hunt has a history of breast cysts, so she Mammogram And ultrasound every year. She wasn’t too worried about the new ridge, but showed it to the doctor who removed it.

Diagnosis: Melanoma.

“Of course, it was already in my body, so everyone panicked at that point,” Hunt said. “Honestly, I didn’t know what was happening to my body. It’s insane to think about it.”

A CT scan revealed tumors in both of her lungs, left kidney, left adrenal gland, and the orbit of each eye. Within a few weeks, she also began to notice some palpable tumors growing under the surface of the skin, including tumors on the back and neck.

Response to immunotherapy

The origin of these spotless melanomas on the skin is still questioned, said Erogle, a Hunts oncologist. One hypothesis is that the original melanoma may spread to other parts of the body, but returns under the skin before the metastatic site is diagnosed, so the primary melanoma disappears and is found. You can’t, Eroglu said.

Hunt started immunotherapy in July 2020 and has responded to it. Many tumors have shrunk and disappeared.But treatment, it’s Rotate the immune system It can also act on healthy cells and create toxicity to fight cancer. Hunt developed type 1 diabetes as a complication of immunotherapy.

“I’m permanently dependent on insulin because my immune system attacked the pancreas while trying to find and kill the cancer,” she said.

Hunt is also recovering from meningitis after treatment recently produced dangerously high levels of immune cells in her spinal fluid. She is far from returning to normal life and does not ask her doctor for a prognosis, but she is focused on expressing her gratitude and raising awareness through her blog. Love and sunscreen..

“The biggest thing for me is to just hug my thin skin and protect my skin if I can come back,” Hunt said. As the mom of a 14-year-old girl, she’s amazed at social media posts that she saw young people praise tanning beds and show others how to get tans faster.

“I also want people to know that time is very valuable,” she said. “We can’t really know when our time will end here, so it’s a good idea not to wait until you face a life-threatening illness, but to get it right.”