For the last ten years of her life, twenty-five-year-old Maria Sylvia had lived with what she thought was a “cool” brown stripe behind her fingernail.
She was unaware that this so-called “cool streak” was actually cause for concern until she saw a widely shared TikTok video.
Sylvia initially saw this odd mark on her thumb when she was sixteen years old. She ignored it, not comprehending how dangerous it was, believing it to be only a mole on her nail bed. Maria was taken aback to discover, after nine years, that she had subungual melanoma, an uncommon kind of skin cancer that appears beneath the nails.
Maria was obviously shocked to hear this news, but she didn’t keep it to herself. She talked to friends and followers about her new life in a video that she uploaded on TikTok. In just two weeks, the video quickly accumulated over nineteen million views. The importance of raising awareness of subungual melanoma is demonstrated by the rise in the number of persons seeking information about the condition.
Maria said as the caption for her TikTok video, “Me: Thought it was a cool streak in my nail, but I’ve had it for ten years.” “The cause is cancer.”
Her story kept getting interesting. In fact, Sylvia made multiple TikTok videos with updates since it generated so much curiosity and worry.
Maria took her admirers back to December 2012, the month she first noticed the small line on her thumbnail. With time, this innocuous streak grew darker and eventually became a silent warning indicator of a rare kind of cancer that piled stress on top of anxiety like snow on a bitterly cold winter’s day.
“I’d had appointments with doctors. I was in and out of physicians’ offices a lot. She further stated, “I was an athlete, so I was getting physicals every year,” in one of her movies, which only made her angrier.
Nevertheless, physicians, may they be blessed, often overlooked the wider picture. A doctor didn’t see it and comment, “Oh, that’s odd, but you don’t really fit the demographics,” until at least 2014. See a physician if it continues to enlarge. By then, it had most likely grown to its ultimate extent.
Maria disregarded the streak because it didn’t pain and, following the advice of one doctor, she assumed it was only a mole. Fortunately, she was encouraged to get a biopsy by a concerned friend. What was the result? Cancer. It wasn’t as severe as it could have been, though, because the cancer was only at stage 0, which indicates it hadn’t yet spread beneath her skin’s surface.
Maria recounted telling Newsweek, “I was warned that this disease can stay in situ (also known as stage 0) for 10–13 years before hitting stage 1. While I was pleased that I had it checked out when I did, I also realized that more work would be required to fully remove this cancer.
Maria is currently on a mission to increase awareness and encourage people to have cancer screenings.
“I think some people are afraid to confront the possibility of having cancer and facing their mortality,” she said to Newsweek, striking at the heart of our group’s hesitancy.
The most crucial piece of advice I’ve given is to unwind and go see someone. If caught in its early stages, it is relatively curable, and a month or two of crooked thumb is better than none at all.
Maria Sylvia’s journey from thinking she had a strange streak to realizing the horrifying truth of skin cancer serves as a somber warning to exercise caution. In addition to being a tale of a young woman and her brown stripe, it also serves as a reminder to everyone to pay attention to their bodies and seek medical assistance when something feels weird. Because sometimes it’s more than just a streak—it’s a sign.
