The Doctors: Tanning Health Scare Experiment
The Doctors have been talking to a young mother named Kori, who is obsessed with tanning. With her permission, they put her through a health scare experiment that involved showing her what cataracts looked like, what her skin could look like in 20 years of tanning at the rate she’s tanning, and had her sit down with a patient with Stage 4 Melanoma. Now, they had another surprise for her when Amy came out to share her story.
The Doctors: Stage 4 Melanoma Story
The Doctors helped a woman addicted to tanning realize the severity of what she was doing to her body by having her talk to another woman who lost her husband to Stage 4 Melanoma. (wacpan / Shutterstock.com)
Amy’s husband Nick was diagnosed with Stage 4 Melanoma. When he talked to The Doctors in a video segment, he had been given one to four months to live. “A range of thoughts go through your mind. But the one that you always get stuck on and causes a lump in the throat is, ‘Gee, I might not be here to watch my kids grow up,'” Nick said.
There’s a new drug that’s having trials right now that might save Nick’s life, but Nick was disqualified for trials because he went to the ER with a bowel obstruction. “At the moment, doctors have given me a zero percent chance of survival and that drug would’ve given me around a 50 percent chance of survival,” he said.
Amy said she got so angry because something could save Nick, but they weren’t getting it. Nick is 40 and he has three young children. Nick said that he thought it was patronizing for the drug company to make the decision of whether he should get the drug or not.
Amy and Nick launched a campaign to try to get enough signatures to change the drug company’s mind. They received over 480,000 signatures from all over the world. They were hoping that the drug company would see the signatures and show compassion to get the drug. Nick said that if he didn’t get the drug soon, he wasn’t likely to see another Christmas with his family.
Between the time of The Doctors taping that video and taping Amy sitting down with Kori in The Doctors studio, Nick had passed away.
The Doctors: UV Radiation & Skin Cancer Connection
Amy told Kori that there is a direct correlation between UV radiation and skin cancer. Nick didn’t even go to tanning salons; he was out in the normal sun. She said he never got sick and that he was a really healthy person. Nick and Amy had three young kids and two weeks before Nick turned 39 he received a Stage 4 Melanoma diagnosis.
“It’s been devastating. The whole treatment regime and fighting for the drug that we weren’t able to get. It’s been devastating. And if you’re aware of the risks of UV radiation and tanning salons, I beg you to reconsider,” Amy said.
Dr. Lawrence Piro, an oncologist, said that the worst part is that the damage you do today won’t have a result in another 10 or 20 years. He said Kori thinks she’s okay because she’s okay today, but she might not be okay down the road.
The Doctors: What Happens With Melanoma
Nick got the diagnosis after noticing a lump on his arm. The cells of Melanoma change and break through the skin barrier over time. So it started as a lump on his arm and then some were found on his spine. Nick’s lumps were treated by a treatment that is extremely grueling that can cause lung and kidney failure and it causes your skin to fall off. Nick had only a partial response to that treatment.
Then lumps appeared in his abdomen and another tumor wrapped around his bladder and a third started growing in his femur. Nick was always a jogger and he was told he had to stop, because he could break the femur bone, so he had radiation to treat that. Eventually, it spread to his brain, where they tried several different surgeries and treatments. The whole time, Amy said it was like trying to play catch-up, trying to contain the thing.
Kori heard all of this with tears in her eyes, sitting next to Amy on the couch. Dr. Travis told her the reason they wanted her to hear this was because for her, this was all preventable.
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