I thought I was just prone to bug bites - it turns out I had SKIN CANCER nine ... trends now
A woman who thought she just had acne and bug bites turned out to have skin cancer nine times.
Molly, who goes by HR_Molly on social media, thought she just had a bug bite on her leg at first. But when it didn't go away, she sounded the alarm.
'I actually was starting to get this pit in my stomach that this could be skin cancer,' she said in a series of TikTok videos in July, which has more than one million views.
Molly sought help from a dermatologist, who claimed she had nothing to worry about. But when she brought up a blemish on her lip that wouldn't go away, the diagnosis changed.
Molly, who goes by HR_Molly on TikTok, shared a series of videos this summer detailing how she thought blemishes on her skin were just acne or bug bites. They turned out to be skin cancer
'That's probably skin cancer,' he said. 'I was not mentally prepared to start getting shocked in my face, to have them take a biopsy,' Molly said.
'It was scary and kind of mentally traumatizing.'
Since then, she has had the skin cancer basal cell carcinoma, the same cancer First Lady Jill Biden had removed earlier this year, removed nine times from her face, ears, back, legs, chest, and stomach. This form of skin cancer is highly treatable and rarely deadly.
Molly is now warning others to not 'skip the dermatologist,' regardless of skin tone or your level of skin exposure.
'You don't need a lot of sun exposure to get skin cancer,' she said.
'Regardless of the complexion of your skin or your family history, please see a dermatologist if you have access to that.'
Though sun exposure is the main cause of skin cancer, Molly said she has only used tanning beds a few times and hardly spent any time lying out in the sun.
She believes that her ancestry, which is part German, Irish, and Native American, may have predisposed her to the condition.
Skin cancer is most common in white skin, though a 2022 study in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology showed that American Indians and Alaskan Natives had significantly higher rates of skin cancers like melanoma compared to other minority groups.
'Your genetics load the weapon, and your
