We all have some bad habits that we’d love to eliminate from our daily lives, but we often have a difficult time doing so. However, one woman from Tennessee is now speaking out to others after her common and ordinary habit left her with a hole in her face.
Jade Thrasher is an average woman who works as a nurse and is married to the love of her life, Matthew. However, she admits that she had an addiction to a habit that nearly cost her life. It all started when her father, Charles, noticed an odd sore forming on her nose that turned the young woman’s life upside down.
“There was so much pressure to be tanned – everyone wanted to be bronzed,” Jade explains, according to Daily Mail. “It is seen as unattractive to be pale where we live in Nashville.”
In 2014, Jade began to grow concerned over the clear spot her father had noticed on her nose when it began to burst and refused to heal. At that point, she knew she needed to get a biopsy done to ensure it wasn’t skin cancer – unfortunately, that’s exactly what it was.
She was transferred to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville to consultant with specialists. When the day of surgery came, surgeons had to cut out a dime-sized hole out of her right nostril in her nose, as a result of her tanning habit. They replaced the skin with flesh taken off her chest, where she now has a six-inch long scar.
“I want teenagers to see the photo of the hole in my nose so that they know what could happen,” Jade admits “I used to have a sunbed in my house, but I’ve thrown it in the trash. I didn’t want to sell it, because I didn’t want anybody else to go through what I went through. I definitely regret the years of tanning, but in a way I saved my skin at a young age because I got cancer.”
Jade was extremely lucky that her cancer was caught early and that she didn’t need to undergo chemotherapy. Although she has made a full recovery, it took her two months before she was no longer in agony. She has since underwent laser surgery to help make her nose and chest scars from the surgery less obvious.
Thankfully, Jade has learned her lesson and has vowed to never use a tanning bed again. She even uses an umbrella when she’s in the sun and wears SPF 50 sunblock. “When you’re a teenager you think you’re invincible,” Jade explains – but, you’re not. “
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