21-year-old Karolina Jasko from Chicago (USA) puts a lot of effort into how she looks and even participated in the ‘Miss Illinois’ contest. However, when she noticed a black mark on one of her fingernails and the doctor gave her a chilling diagnosis, she stopped focusing on her appearance so much.
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A black nail and swollen finger
It all began when Karolina suddenly discovered a black line on one of her fingernails. She didn’t think much of it and went straight to the nail salon to hide the ugly-looking mark. After all, a beauty contestant can’t be seen out and about with an ugly nail. Two weeks later, it became infected, turned red and started to swell up. She didn’t know what else to do so she went to a skin doctor.
The doctor removed some tissue to have it checked out and tested. The 21-year-old didn’t expect the diagnosis she received at all. She had a melanoma! This can be very dangerous, especially when it occurs under a nail because it’s difficult to spot and tends to look just like a black bruise of a fungal infection.
She had to undergo an operation to have her whole nail taken off so that they could remove the entire melanoma. This was four years ago and since then, it hasn’t returned.
Skin cancer can be genetic, but the risks are increased by exposure to UV-light
Karolina explained to the Daily Mail that she was lucky that her thumb swelled up, because it probably would have taken her a lot longer to think of going to the skin doctor. She regularly went to the nail salon where her skin was regularly exposed to intense UV rays which contributed to the growth of her skin cancer. Her mother had also already had a melanoma, which is why this skin cancer for her could have also been down to genetics.
This shows that not only can beauty be pain, your health can be implicated too. In Karolina Jasko’s case, things ended quite well. She walked away with a finger without a nail and will probably never again let her nails be exposed to these kinds of rays…
Take a look at the video above to see for yourself what the warning signs look like.
