Boy, 15, with advanced melanoma recalls early symptom that doctors said was a sign of puberty

Source: Today, May 2025

Samuel Gee is spreading the importance of wearing sunscreen and not tanning after being diagnosed with melanoma in high school.

Before a wrestling tournament in early 2020, Samuel Gee, then 15, underwent a skin check to make sure he didn’t have ringworm that could spread to others. During the inspection, a referee pointed something out to Gee.

“They’re like, ‘What’s that?’ I was like, ‘I don’t know. It’s just a spot I had since I was little,’” Gee, now 19, a biomedical engineering student at Texas A&M, tells TODAY.com. “They were like, ‘Well, we’ll let you wrestle this time, but you have to get it checked out.’”

Gee visited a dermatologist and learned that the mole was cancerous. Soon after he was diagnosed with Stage 3 melanoma.

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