Guilia Newton, a stage 4 melanoma survivor, is the ultimate IMPACT Melanoma advocate, running the 2024 New York City marathon for Team IMPACT and speaking out on how preventable melanoma can be. Now, knowing that 90% of skin melanoma is preventable, she wishes she’d adopted prevention strategies earlier in her life. Thinking back on sunburns of her youth, she now focuses her attention on sun safety and protection, especially when her children are on the beaches of California.
Over a five-year period, Guilia had basal cells removed from her body. In 2006, she was diagnosed with stage 2 melanoma cancer, having it removed from her shoulder along with a lymph node. Settling back into her day-to-day life, she thought melanoma was in the rearview mirror. Fifteen years after her initial diagnosis, Guilia was told she had a mass in her lung, leading to testing, surgeries, and treatments over the course of a year. Guilia slowly started on the long road back to recovery, making progress little by little. She remembers every day, getting back to the activities she loves including hiking, walking her dog with her husband, and even running. Running at a slower pace, but running nonetheless, which Guilia considered monumental after seven days in the ICU, seven months of infusions, and a major surgery removing two lobes of her lung and repairing her heart.
Guilia has become an advocate and a valued supporter of IMPACT Melanoma and our mission to make melanoma a thing of the past. She supports our efforts in prevention education and the importance of early detection, along with bringing sun safe awareness and education on the dangers of UV light from not only the sun but also tanning beds. She reiterates the importance of annual skin checks; the earlier a melanoma is identified the higher the chances for a complete cure.
We have separated Guilia’s incredible journey into two videos. We encourage you to watch and hear her story and to share it with others to help us achieve our mission of making melanoma a thing of the past.
Watch part 1 of Guilia’s story here.
Watch part 2 of Guilia’s story here.
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