When Mariena Browning, from Pocatello, Idaho was 22, she was in the best shape of her life and busy thinking about other things – ready to buy a house and start a family with her husband.
Weeks later, she’d discover she had Stage 4 melanoma, despite having no moles or marks on her body.
This lead to a harrowing three years of treatments – which turned her eyes yellow, made her catch a nasty colon infection and changed her life forever.
Mrs Browning, now 28 and a new mother, wants people to know about the risks they take when they forego daily sunscreen use, and wants people to know that you can get melanoma without ever having a mole.
‘Now that I know how crappy and intense melanoma and its treatment can be, I’m a huge advocate for sun safety, sunscreen use and yearly skin checks with a dermatologist, even though mine didn’t show up in the more traditional way,’ Mrs Browning, told SELF magazine.
Melanoma is a type of skin cancer that affects the cells in your skin that produce the brown pigment that give skin its tan or brown color.
Approximately 1.4 million Americans are living with the disease.
Most commonly, people find out they have skin cancer when they develop an odd looking spot on their skin or when a mole they had previously begins changing shape, color or size.
Browning was one of the 3 percent of skin cancer patients who don’t have a ‘primary site’ that doctors could use to identify her skin cancer.
When caught early, melanoma is easily treatable. But for Mrs Browning it was allowed to grow in silence, spreading from her skin to her lymph nodes, where doctors first found it as a bump in her leg in 2018.
They initially diagnosed her with stage 3, which is an indication that her cancer had begun to spread.
She tried to join a clinical trial in hopes that it might work more quickly than other treatments. Right before she was scheduled to begin the experimental treatment, her doctors delayed her to check out a new growth on her stomach.
In the time that she was delayed- a mere hours – the trial got shut down because it was causing people to have bad side effects, which she called ‘divine intervention’.
This delay also brought bad news – the new growth on her stomach was cancerous, which officially meant she had stage 4 cancer – even more advanced than originally thought.
That cut her survival rate drastically – roughly eight in ten patients who are diagnosed with stage 4 melanoma die within five years.
Four days after her new diagnosis, Mrs Browning had an invasive surgery to remove all of her lymph nodes in her left groin, the lump in her stomach and a lump in her neck.
In November 2018, she started oral chemotherapy – which involved taking 18 pills daily for nine months.
Months later, when using the restroom, all that came out was blood – which ‘looked like a murder scene’ and caused her to faint. It turns out she had contracted a serious bacterial infection that ravaged her colon.
‘I don’t even have words to express what a stressful and scary time that was,’ she said.
She recovered from the infection, but discovered in October 2019 that her cancer had spread to her brain. So she had to have radiation treatment.
After this, she was given a steroid treatment that made her irritable and hungry and dealt with temporary, but alarming liver problems that caused her to develop bright yellow jaundiced-eyes.
Finally in February 2020, she got the news that her doctors couldn’t detect any tumors in her body.
She seized treatment completely in October 2021.
Since this news, she’s moved on with her life, finally getting back to some of the things she set her sights on before the diagnosis.
In the June 2023, she and her husband had a baby girl named Kiya.
Kiya was an ‘absolute blessing’ for Mrs Browning, partially because it’s difficult for most recent cancer patient’s to conceive.
Throughout it all, she’s maintained a positive attitude, and wants to use what she’s learned to help spread awareness about melanoma to other young people.
‘I’d still love more than anything to spread Melanoma Awareness,’ she shared in a 2021 Instagram post, ‘and help women know that even though sometimes your world gets flipped upside down it’s still possible to find the happy and as my grandpa always says “keep smilin” even when it feels like life isn’t fair or you’re so far behind everyone else.’
Dr. Debi Johnson is a medical expert and health journalist dedicated to promoting well-being. With a background in medicine, she offers evidence-based insights into health trends and wellness practices. Beyond her reporting, Dr. Debi enjoys hiking, yoga, and empowering others to lead healthier lives.
