Beating The Odds Against Merkel Cell Carcinoma

Overview

Parents are always looking out for their kids. It’s rare when it happens the other way around. But Susan Manber’s 13-year-old daughter saved her life.

It happened one afternoon, not long after Hurricane Sandy had wreaked havoc on the New York City area. “We’d been without power for two weeks and suddenly the lights came on,” recalls the 55-year-old New Yorker. “My daughter, Sarina, and I started celebrating, and then we wound up collapsing on the couch with her head in my lap.” That’s when Sarina said, ‘Hey Mom, what’s that on your nose?’”

Sarina was pointing to a barely perceptible, pimple-like bump. “It was literally underneath my nostril,” says the mother of two, who was single at the time. “You couldn’t see it unless you were looking up from below at that exact angle.” Manber agreed it was an odd place for a pimple and made an appointment with her dermatologist.

Manber’s doctor wasn’t concerned, but removed the lesion and sent it out for testing just to be sure. When he called a week later, his first words were: “You should sit down.”