A woman from Texas realised that her birthmark had skin cancer.
According to Insider, Ilia J. Smith, 42, was diagnosed with stage 2B melanoma in 2020 after scratching her mole and it began bleeding. Melanoma can be detected by a mole that itches or bleeds, according to the American Academy of Dermatology Association.
When her "birthmark" started bleeding, she remembered how her friend Tracee Blackburn, a physician assistant who specialised in dermatology, had advised her to get the mole checked out in 2009.
Smith dismissed it at the time, claiming it was her birthmark.
She emailed a picture of the bleed to Blackburn, who advised her to obtain a biopsy as soon as possible.
According to Insider, Smith's disease had not yet spread to her lymph nodes, thus she simply required the deadly mole surgically removed. Smith was screened for skin cancer every three months for the next two years after a significant amount of tissue was removed. She is now only seen every six months.
Smith revealed to Insider that she used to be an enthusiastic tanner. "A lot of my family members are darker-skinned — I wanted to be like my family," Smith, a Nigerian-Irish national, explained. "Being African-American, you don't think about skin cancer."
"All this time, I could have been protecting my skin and not maybe have fallen down this route where I can't even be in the sun at all," she explained, adding that instead of sunscreen, she would use "more of a tanning lotion that had more of a 3 or 7 SPF."
Despite her self-proclaimed love of the outdoors, Smith told Insider that she has had to drastically alter her lifestyle, abandoning tanning beds and avoiding the sun entirely – the latter of which has been tough when living in Dallas.
"I love running and just being in the sun and taking my daughter to the pool," Smith explained.
Regardless, Smith learned that "all ethnicities, not just people of colour, need to look at themselves." If you have freckles or moles, examine them and have them evaluated by a board-certified dermatologist at least once a year."
