Blessings in Disguise:

When I was a teenager, I went to a tanning bed for the first time. I got fried after only 5 minutes of being in there and didn't think it was that cool. For whatever reason, I went again a year or so later and became kind of hooked. It was so easy to drop in and get a quick tan. Not to mention the fact that I just felt prettier when I was tan. The darker skin helped to hide my imperfections and made me look skinnier.

Shortly after I turned 21, I had a family doctor who noticed a large mole on my back. Once she pointed it out, I guess it did look rather large and I hadn't noticed it was so big before. She sent me to a dermatologist and I went, thinking nothing of it. I mean, HELLO, I was only 21, it's not like I would really have skin cancer or anything.

Needless to say, that traumatic visit was nothing like I expected it to be. Not only did I have to have that mole sliced off and cauterized, but I also had to have about 3 others taken off as well. As is normal procedure, they sent my "samples" off to be tested. Two of them came back as pre-cancerous. They determined that they did not remove enough skin around one of those that was pre-cancerous, so I had to go back to the center and have a deep gash cut into my back and stitches put in. I now have to go back once a year to get a full body check-up and have had at least a handful of suspicious looking spots removed since.

I remember at the time I was so upset- not because I could have developed skin cancer, but because I now had an ugly scar on my back. I obviously didn't have very much perspective on life back then. Since that time, I have not returned to a tanning bed, except for one time before my wedding. But now, looking back, I think that was the best thing that could have happened to me at age 21, otherwise I probably would still be visiting tanning beds.

I see articles like
this
and I thank my lucky stars that I got pre-cancer at age 21.