Skin Cancer ‘Sting’ a Frightening Reality

One Saturday in October 2025, Linda Gerac Aguirre of Pearland was dressing for her hair appointment when she felt a sting on her back near her left shoulder blade. The 61-year-old thought she had been stung by a bee or bitten by some sort of insect. When she got to the hair salon, she asked her hairdresser to check the area of her back that was still stinging.

“She told me there didn’t appear to be a bite or red mark where I felt the stinging, but she said there was a small dark mole that looked like the mark of a Sharpie® pen there,” Aguirre recalls. The hairdresser took a photo of the mole.  “It was perfectly round to the naked eye, but something told me to get it checked.”

Aguirre made an appointment with Megan Rogge, MD, a dermatologist affiliated with Memorial Hermann, on October 31, and Dr. Rogge took a biopsy of the mole. When the results of the biopsy came back, Aguirre was shocked to learn it was spitzoid melanoma, a rare type of skin cancer that often resembles its benign counterpart Spitz nevi.

“I thought it would never be me,” Aguirre said. “I thought melanoma happened to people who were out at the pool and sunbathed.”

Aguirre did sunbathe as a teenager, but since then, she didn’t consider herself high-risk because she rarely went to the pool or beach. “As a young mom, I would watch my son at track meets but didn’t even think about using sunscreen because I wasn’t in a bathing suit,” she admits.

Dr. Rogge referred Aguirre to Casey Duncan, MD, an associate professor of surgical oncology at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston and a surgical oncologist affiliated with Memorial Hermann. Dr. Duncan excised the cancer in a surgical procedure at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center.

“With melanoma, we remove the tumor and a wide area, known as a margin, of seemingly healthy skin around it,” Dr. Duncan says. “This helps us determine whether the cancer was completely removed and gives us an adequate assessment of the thickness of the tumor and the risk of spread to lymph nodes or other organs.”

The depth of involvement of the skin and the spread to the lymph nodes determines the stage of the cancer and the most effective treatment, according to research.

Dr. Duncan explains that stage I tumors are localized to the tumor itself. Stage II means the cancer has penetrated deeper into the skin, but no cancer cells are found in the lymph nodes, which help cleanse the body of infections and cancer. Stage III cancer involves at least one lymph node close to the tumor, and stage IV, or metastatic cancer, indicates the cancer has spread beyond the lymph nodes to other parts of the body.

In Aguirre’s case, her spitzoid melanoma was stage I and contained to the mole itself. With its removal, her melanoma is cured, but Dr. Duncan warns that one melanoma substantially increases a person’s risk of developing another over a lifetime. For that reason, Aguirre will undergo regular skin checks with a dermatologist to be sure that nothing new develops.

Dr. Duncan notes that melanomas, like Aguirre’s, can be tricky to diagnose because they typically look benign to the naked eye. More common skin cancers tend to change in appearance or behavior over time. “They may grow, bleed, itch or change colors,” she says. “They may be flat, pink or white and are not always the big, black, irregular bumps we often see documented, especially online.”

Dr. Duncan also warns that while most skin cancers develop on sun-exposed skin and are linked to blistering sunburns earlier in life, they can also show up inside the mouth, anus, vagina or in other unexposed places. Key to finding these is doing regular checks of your skin and these areas, she says.

Aguirre is relieved that her melanoma was caught early enough to avoid more extensive treatment. She now wears sunscreen daily and pays careful attention to her skin.

“I have a six-inch scar on my back that serves as a reminder of this,” she says. “I never thought that I’d be at risk for skin cancer, but now I have an awareness that no one is excluded from the risks. To say I was shocked is an understatement, but this turned out to be a blessing. I was supposed to find this.”