A Cut Above The Rest

Your upcoming salon visit for that lob (that's right, a long bob) could net you more than a trendy look. Sometimes your hairstylists can be your first line of defense against skin cancer, and we're here for it.

- AMY WILKINSON

Crusty and gross. That’s how Aly Longendyke describes the itchy patch of skin she discovered above her left ear in late 2013. Twenty-five years old at the time, she had long dealt with a dry scalp, so she figured dandruff shampoo would do the trick. Except the spot didn’t go away – and it even bled a little. 

“But I wasn’t really fazed by it,” Aly, now 31, recalls. “I assumed it would clear up.”

When she got her hair cut in January 2014, her hairdresser Molly Louismet noticed the lesion, the size of a R2 coin, right away. “I asked, ‘Did you hurt yourself?’” recalls Molly. Her client explained that the mark appeared out of nowhere, had been there for a few weeks, and wasn’t healing. The latter set off alarm bells for Molly. Even though she wasn’t sure what the patch was, she advised Aly to make a derm appointment stat, just in case.

It’s a dang good thing she did: Aly was diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma, the most common form of skin cancer. If caught early, basal cell is very treatable. In Aly’s case, that meant undergoing an outpatient surgical procedure to remove it.