Jade Thrasher is a young nurse from Tennessee. 

In 2014, her father, Charles, noticed that she had an odd sore growing on the side of her nose.  When the sore continued to grow, then began to burst, and refused to heal, she went to get a biopsy. The news came back: she had skin cancer.

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According to an article in HuffPost UK, Jade started using tanning beds at a young age. Her routine settled at doing three 20-minute sessions a week for 11 years. 

In the months leading up to her 2010 wedding, her schedule skyrocketed to six to seven times a week. She loved the bronze look so much that she bought her own tanning bed to keep in her home. It would take another four years for the effects to start appearing on her face. 

How had she gotten it? It came from years of tanning in salons and even in her own personal tanning bed. “There was so much pressure to be tanned — everyone wanted to be bronzed,” she said in a 2016 interview. “It is seen as unattractive to be pale where we live in Nashville.”

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At the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Thrasher consulted with doctors regarding the skin cancer on her face. During the surgery, doctors removed a dime-sized portion of skin from her nose. To correct the hole, they removed skin from her chest, leaving a six-inch-long scar.

“I want teenagers to see the photo of the hole in my nose so that they know what could happen,” said Thrasher. “I used to have a sunbed in my house, but I’ve thrown it in the trash. I didn’t want to sell it because I didn’t want anybody else to go through what I went through. I definitely regret the years of tanning, but in a way, I saved my skin at a young age because I got cancer.”

Unfortunately, Jade's experience isn't a unique one: Indoor tanning is responsible for 419K cases of skin cancer in the US every year. Women under 30 who tan indoors are six times more likely to develop melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, than women who have never tanned. The schedule Jade maintained for over a decade became the worst possible combination of factors.

She made a full recovery after months of terrible pain from the surgery, but had to undergo additional surgery to correct the scars on both her nose and her chest.

“When you’re a teenager, you think you’re invincible,” Thrasher explained. But you’re not. As she adds, “You have to be confident in your own skin, regardless of what color it is.”

Thrasher refuses to use a tanning bed anymore and always makes sure to use SPF 50 sunblock whenever she’s outside. Make certain to protect yourself this summer and not let the sun damage your skin. Use sunblock and your best judgment, and remember that tanning beds are just as deadly as the real thing. 

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Merethe Najjar is a professional writer, editor, and award-winning fiction author. Her articles have been featured in The Aviator Magazine, Infinite Press, Yahoo, BRIDES, and more.