As told to Nicole Audrey Spector

I grew up in a family where wearing sunscreen wasn’t talked about and was rarely used. Quite the opposite actually: We doused ourselves in suntan oil and baked in the sun. The more sun, the better!

As a Hispanic woman with brown-colored skin, I enjoyed watching my skin shade become darker in the summer months.

No one in my family knew much about melanoma or that anyone can get it.

In 2020, during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, I noticed that a mole on my ankle was getting darker. By this time, I was much more educated about the dangers of skin cancer. As a health writer, I’d covered a story about a young woman who had melanoma and eventually died from it after the cancer returned and spread.

I made an appointment with a dermatologist. We met over video chat because the strict Covid protocols prevented an in-person checkup.

The dermatologist examined the mole as best he could through our virtual visit and said it looked normal. He didn’t give me any more information, such as the signs to look out for or what changes to be aware of, which, looking back, would have been helpful.

A year later, a totally different skin issue popped up. I had what ended up being a dermatofibroma — a small round bump — on my back. It was itching and bothering me. So, I went in person to a new dermatologist. She diagnosed the dermatofibroma and said it wasn’t cancer but still recommended giving me a full body skin exam. This involved looking carefully at every mole on my body.

I showed her the mole on my ankle that the previous dermatologist wasn’t worried about. She thought it looked suspicious and biopsied it then and there.

A week later, she called me and said the mole revealed melanoma. The next step involved numbing my skin and removing a half-dollar-coin-sized amount of tissue to be sure the melanoma hadn’t spread.

I was shocked at my diagnosis and so was my family. I was young, healthy and educated. I wrongly assumed that when you have all those boxes checked, you’re safe from developing illnesses or ailments. There’s also an idea that Hispanics/Latinx people don’t get skin cancer — but they certainly do.

Though the melanoma was caught early in my case, the word “cancer” holds a certain weight. When you hear you have melanoma it causes you to reflect, think of what’s important and inspires you to let others know that this could happen to them, too.