Michele Perkins has never forgotten the dermatologist who saved her life. “The shock of learning you have melanoma—and what might have happened—was jolting,” Perkins says. “I’m grateful it was caught in time. I dodged a bullet.”
To honor her skin cancer hero, Perkins and her husband, James, recently made a gift to the Department of Dermatology to create the Dr. Steven K. Spencer Endowed Fund, named for the Dartmouth Health dermatologist who retired in 2012. In addition to removing the cancerous mole on Perkins’ back, Spencer also removed basal cell carcinoma, another form of skin cancer, from her husband’s face.
In fact, it was her husband’s delicate Mohs surgery that then led to Spencer examining Perkins’ mole. Her primary care physician had dismissed the spot as only a cosmetic concern, but the dermatologist asked to see Perkins after her husband mentioned she had a suspicious-looking mole during his own appointment. Perkins was hesitant because she didn’t have a scheduled appointment, but Spencer insisted on seeing her—and then removing the mole—immediately.
“Dr. Spencer was so wonderful and always so cheerful. He gave me the most thorough care,” she says, adding that she wants the gift to fund dermatology education, especially related to melanoma. Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer and affects more than 100,000 people annually, according to the American Cancer Society.
That desire is already being fulfilled through research conducted by fourth-year dermatology resident Dylan Badin, MD, MED ‘21, who received a $35,000 grant through the fund to study the mortality risk for patients with melanoma in situ, an early-stage form of the skin cancer. His research aims to determine the rate of recurrence and the rate of new skin cancers in these patients in order to provide better guidance for the frequency of follow-up screenings.
“The risk for these patients is not well understood,” says Badin, who presented his data at a recent American College of Mohs Surgery annual meeting. “That drove the question: How often should we be screening these patients? Can we confidently say how often melanoma comes back or the patient develops something new? This research will shed light on those questions.”
