For about 10 years Maria Sylvia had a streak in her nail that was a mole. A recent biopsy revealed she had a rare cancer called a subungual melanoma.For a decade, Maria Sylvia had a tan streak on her nail. Doctors told her it was a mole and nothing to worry about. After a colleague urged her to get it examined again, Sylvia learned it was a rare skin cancer, called subungual melanoma, and shared her experience on TikTok.
“She saw a picture that looked like my thumb and so she sent it to me, ‘You need to get this looked at,’” Sylvia said. “It’s almost like you don’t want to face it at that point because it’s scary.”“I owe it to my co-worker for creating a voice in the back of my head to get it looked at,” Sylvia said.“He wasn’t even concerned. He was like, ‘Oh I don’t think it’ll be that,’” Sylvia said. “I’m like ‘OK, well I still want to get this biopsy done.
“It’s a pretty rare subtype. However because of that it could be missed and could go on for years without being recognized,” Dr. Adam Friedman, chair of dermatology at George Washington School of Medicine and Health Science, who was not Sylvia’s doctor, told TODAY. “It can be certainly aggressive if not caught — that’s the rule of all melanomas.”
“It gets a little tricker because how do you define it? Is it just a band from a healthy mole or is it band from a melanoma,” Friedman said. “Is that band getting wider and darker over time? Is there any injury to the nail itself?”
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