“Have you always had that?” asked my ex-boyfriend with a quizzical look, peering at me as we stood in line for greasy hamburgers and fries. He’d known my face for two decades and was confused by the interloper brown spot that had appeared on my left cheek, its borders quickly spreading.
The answer was no, I haven’t always had it. It’s a sun spot that blossomed on my face over the past few years, flourishing and expanding due to my laziness around dabbing on sunscreen daily. I’d had a dermatologist pal check it out with his li’l loupe device a few years prior and he dubbed it non-threatening. Still, this was the final kick in the pants to do what I’d been putting off for years: a full mole-mapping.
As a pale person of British descent, I’m covered in a smattering of freckles, moles and various other dots and dapples. Unlike many of my millennial peers, I never turned to tanning beds and didn’t lie out due to a propensity to burn, thankfully, but my lack of daily sunscreen and proper protection during the summer months and tropical holidays meant I had my fair share of discolouration by age 40.
You’d think sun stupidity would decrease with each subsequent generation, as the pile of evidence grows, showing how crucial sun protection is in preventing skin cancers. But, in fact, there’s a movement to eschew sunscreen altogether due to misinformation proliferating online. Some TikTok videos proclaim sunscreen to be toxic or cause a vitamin D deficiency; others warn that it is more dangerous than sun damage itself. Some even swear that it’s sunscreen that causes cancer.
This is especially dangerous given the rate of skin cancer has been increasing steadily over the past 30 years, and that melanoma, a potentially deadly type of skin cancer, is one of the fastest increasing cancers in developed countries.
I knew I needed to practise better sun safety, and finally started wearing sunscreen daily this year, covering up in sunnier situations and sitting in the shade. The final piece in the puzzle: I wanted a record of my many wee flecks so I could track if they’d mutated in years to come—just like the brown squidge on my cheek that had grown and grown and grown. So when online healthcare purveyor Maple invited me to try one of its partner mole-mapping clinics, I agreed.
I headed to a sober-looking medical building in downtown Toronto, where I took an elevator up to the minimalist office of the Palmerston Mole Scan Clinic, where I was greeted by Rosa, a kindly mole-mapping tech, or dermascopist. She gave me the option to stay in my underwear, but I wanted every single square inch of flesh captured so I stripped naked, ready for the topography of my body to be preserved in a zip file forever.
Rosa validated my sense of urgency over getting my moles mapped by using the scientific term for the moles and freckles that cover my body: lesions. LESIONS. She also asked if I had asked my hairstylist to check my scalp for lesions. Had I asked my dentist to check my mouth for lesions? Had I asked a partner or friend to check the parts of my body I could not see for lesions? Even with studious mole checking throughout the years (the ABCDE system was drilled into me early), clearly I was not thinking about lesions enough in my day-to-day life.
I strode up to the camera area, which had a chipper bright-blue background and markings on the floor showing where to put my feet for the various funny naked poses I had to strike for the FotoFinder ATBM machine, which blows up all your nooks and crannies to 140 times their usual size. None of the poses were particularly strenuous, even for someone as clumsy and uncoordinated as me: hold your hands above your head, hold your arms out in front of you. A slight challenge was posed by documenting a mole between my left toes, which required me to bend down and spread my piggies so they could capture the tiny crevice.
Rosa finished documenting the marks and then took the photos over to the doctors to examine and make sure nothing required further investigation. Success!
After enduring a half-hour of hearing the word “lesion” ad nauseam, more horrors lay ahead. I received a copy of the report, filled with hilariously unflattering nude photos of myself in Juergen Teller-esque fluorescent lighting. That wasn’t the scary part, though: it was the ominous dermatological terms peppered throughout, each sounding more like a Star Wars villain than the last. Dermal nevus. Lentigo. Seborrheic keratosis. Boy, was I glad I’d recorded all these little suckers.
I felt doubly smug about it once I started learning about the fallout of bad sun behaviour from the clinic’s owners. “In 2024, an estimated 11,300 Canadians will be diagnosed with melanoma, and young Canadians are particularly at risk as many are spending more time outdoors to boost vitamin D levels, without proper skin protection,” Dr. Avi Whiteman told me.
He said that social media really is doing IRL damage. “There has been a growing, dangerous misconception circulating on social media that sunscreen has ‘forever chemicals,’ which has been scaring many people away from using it,” Whiteman said. “However, sunscreen has undergone rigorous scientific testing and has proven to be safe and not harmful. This type of misinformation is harmful because it leads people to avoid sunscreen, increasing their risk of skin damage and skin cancer.”
They’re especially concerned about youngsters. “Many young Canadians neglect sun safety tips, engaging in high-risk behaviours like tanning, either outdoors or using tanning beds,” Dr. Robert Solomon said. “It’s crucial for everyone, especially young people, to take sun safety seriously. Early exposure to tanning beds, for example, can increase a person’s chance of developing melanoma by up to 75 per cent.” But, he pointed out, melanoma has a cure rate of 85 per cent when it’s detected early.
Since the clinic opened in 2019, they’ve diagnosed 150 cases of melanoma so far. “The most common misconception that I encounter is that melanoma primarily impacts older people. In reality, melanoma can affect people of all ages, including young adults and teenagers,” Whiteman said. “Similar to mammograms or pap smears, mole-mapping helps catch concerns early when they’re most treatable.”
The hope is that more access to mole-mapping could encourage folks to be proactive about their skin, and help prevent life-threatening cancers. While mole-mapping is more common in Europe, it’s still relatively new technology here in Canada, and it’s not covered by OHIP. A session costs $599, but some insurance plans may help cover it and Maple clients—who pay a $79.99 monthly fee for access to healthcare providers, including dermatologists—can apply their additional $80 monthly credit toward the cost.
For me, it’s worth the investment. I check off nearly every one of the risk factors that Solomon reeled off: I burn easily, I have fair skin, I have multiple moles, and while I don’t have family history of melanoma, there is cancer lurking about in my family tree.
It’s been two months since I had my moles mapped, and just the act of doing it has made me more vigilant about sun safety. The other day, I noticed that my right cheek is attempting to grow another lentigo to match the first one. I redoubled my resolve to apply sunscreen daily and prevent it expanding any further. And if it does? Well, at least now I have the receipts.
