It’s stories like these that can really bring out the hypochondriac in people because the worst cases always seem to come out from the most minuscule things. Jude had to learn that lesson the hard way and you’ll never believe where it came from in the first place!
For Jude Thrasher, she was one of these regular customers until it changed her life completely as she lost an entire part of her face. This is the truth about what can happen to you if you use tanning beds…
Jude had been using tanning beds since she was 13 years old, and continued using them three times a week for eleven years.
She would do twenty-minute sessions when she went to the salons instead of using the one her parents has at home. This in itself was definitely excessive for her, but by the time of her wedding, she had upped it to going to six to seven times a week, still doing her twenty-minute sessions.
At this point, Jude, aged 26, knew that her skin was taking damage as it was slowly wrinkling. Even more striking was the strange sore on her nose that she was developing. And it was only getting started…
“The sore had burst open overnight,” said Judy Thrasher, “I just thought I must have scratched myself in my sleep.”
Then just one month later it came close to healing but burst again. And she suddenly had a hole in her nose.
It was at this moment that Judy pieced together the puzzle. “After a few months when it failed to heal, being a nurse, I realized what was going on,” she said.
“I just knew. I went to my local doctor and said, ‘I have cancer on my face.”
It was true, she had developed skin cancer on her nose, and had to have the skin removed and replaced by a skin graft. It was a terrifying moment for the young woman. She had considered herself invincible and certainly not susceptible to skin cancer. While she did survive the cancer, she now has a scar on her nose, but a six-inch long one also her chest where her skin was taken to patch up her nose.
She now always applies sunblock, wears an umbrella in the sun, and has full body check-ups every three months. And she will for the rest of her life.
“When you’re a teenager you think you’re invincible,” she said. “But I covered my face while using the tanning bed and still got cancer.”
Judy now serves as an inspiration to some: “I have had tons of girls saying I have saved their skin after they’ve seen my picture and been putt off sunbeds.”
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