Recovering from skin cancer with tissue expanders

I've seen this video being shared all over with zero information about the woman or what has happened to her. (Seriously, the internet is lazy and can't be bothered to look shit up and credit people. Easier to just copy and paste.)

With the video being shared far and wide with only the heading "A young woman with cancer recorded her recovery process ❤️", it is easy to assume (as most people did) that the bumps on her head were tumours.

The video shows Alondra Sierra documenting her experience with saline tissue expanders before an operation to remove skin cancer. Thanks to an extremely large mole in her hairline that turned out to be malignant.

You can see in the video that the mole had been removed (it looks like, at any rate), but the cancer had already spread. (This is how I understand it, feel free to correct me.)

The bumps on her head are saline tissue expanders that are injected via tubes placed behind her ears. Each time only a very little bit, about a teaspoon, over the course of 3 months. This causes the skin to stretch, to be able to cover the patch of removed skin left after the operation. (This technique is also used in breast reconstruction operations after a mastectomy.)

Here you can see the process of injecting the saline (no sound, not sure if it's because I don't have a TikTok account or what):

Since this experience, she got diagnosed with skin cancer again - a malignant basal cell carcinoma on her eyelid. But it was detected very early and seems to have been removed without the cancer having spread.

Alondra Sierra on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@alondra_sierrat
(this is where she documented the process)
InstaGram https://www.instagram.com/alondrasierrat/

Wear sunscreen, people.

#til
#mildly_interesting
#fuckcancer