Advertisement

I Got My First-Ever Skin Cancer Check on Zoom During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Confession: I've had three dermatologist appointments in the past two months, which is a record even for my skin-obsessed self. When New York was first put under stay-at-home orders, my previously smooth skin erupted in a bout of what I can only assume was stress-induced acne. I took the video call with my dermatologist from my fire escape and held back tears. A few weeks and an increased dosage of spironolactone later, I met with my dermatologist for a virtual follow-up visit while seated on my bedroom floor, and she cheered when she saw my finally breakout-free skin.

And last week, I met with Orit Markowitz, the director of pigmented lesions and skin cancer at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, via Zoom for my first-ever skin check. For my skin, if not my social life, it's been an eventful few months.

According to the Skin Cancer Foundation, an all-over skin self-examination should happen once per month, with an additional once per year check with a dermatologist. With stay-at-home orders keeping people at bay from their doctors' offices, some dermatologists are offering virtual skin checks, and no one is offering them with more gusto than Markowitz.

As she recently explained to Allure, "people are hunkering down and they don't realize [skin checks are] something that can be done virtually."

Marie Hayag, a board-certified dermatologist in New York City, adds that skin checks, even done virtually with the guidance of a professional, can make a difference. "A self-check is an important early screening tool to recognize new lesions or changing lesions usually noticed by the patient," she says. "But a dermatologic exam is important because we usually pick up on things that the normal person wouldn't pick up on their own."

To help, Markowitz has developed a comprehensive plan to help patients of all technology comfort levels undergo a professional skin check from home.

My appointment technically started the morning before our scheduled Zoom call. "When you've just taken a shower and aren't yet dressed, that's a good time to take a peek and make sure there isn't something new [on your skin]," Markowitz tells me.

I took her advice, and spent 15 minutes in front of a floor-length mirror post-shower and sans clothes. As previously instructed, I combed over each body part individually, stopping to take photos of marks along the way. I used a blow-dryer to separate my hair into sections and examine my scalp. I used a hand mirror (or to be more accurate, the mirror inside my Urban Decay Born to Run palette) to check my back.

As per my instructions, I snapped far-away and close-up photos of each marking and texted them to Markowitz's HIPAA-secured phone number. She responded quickly and asked for magnified images of one of the marks, at which point, the tech-savvy aspect of the visit began.

Markowitz's office gifted me a DermLite Hüd Home Dermatoscope (she offers a coupon to help patients cover the cost to encourage self-checks), a professional tool that uses light and magnification to provide an ultra close-up view of the skin. In a typical office visit, she'd have examined every inch of skin with her scope.

Here, I attached the at-home Hüd to my phone for the same effect. The inch-long device is meant to cover your phone camera and lock in place with a plastic mount. You could hardly call it a "set-up process" — it's more like a one-step snapping into place — but I admit that I needed to pause and take a deep breath when I had trouble aligning the Hüd properly. But once I got the camera fired up, I was amazed and more than a little grossed out at my magnified skin. (It turns out that, when viewed from extreme close up, I have way more gray hairs than I thought.) I texted the new, closer-up photos to the same number.

Finally, I met with the doctor for my actual visit via Zoom. Thankfully, she wasn't worried about any of the marks she'd seen — but she needed to see more. At 30 years old, I should have far more blemishes than the two I had sent her, she told me.

Since I hadn't seen anything specific, she asked me to take photos of my individual body parts for her to examine (one for each arm, one for stomach, one for back of the neck, etc.) She also walked me through the best way to take a well-lit photo: with the camera directly between you and the light source. Thanks to the window layout in my apartment, that'll mean balancing my phone on a couch on self-timer while I stand naked next to the coffee table. Health isn't always glamorous, folks.

Of all the yoga classes, nail art trials, and failed attempts to dye my underarm hair (of which there have been two) under stay-at-home orders, the virtual skin check may have brought me the most out of my comfort zone. It was my responsibility to take the photos, take different photos, and then follow up again with more photos (a step I admit is still on my to-do list).

But throughout the various components of the process — which only took about an hour total — I kept the sobering statistics about skin cancer in mind. It's a difficult reality to consider, but that hour could save my (your!) life. Plus, I got to keep the scope, and I can't think of a better way to kill time in quarantine than taking ultra-magnified photos of my dinner, my cat, and, of course, my gray hairs.


More on protecting your skin:


Now, see how sun care has evolved within the last 100 years:

Watch Now: Allure Video.

You can follow Allure on Instagram and Twitter, or subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date on all things beauty.

Originally Appeared on Allure