Beauty queen discovers melanoma lurking in unlikeliest place

Karolina Jasko is a dedicated beauty pageant contestant — but there’s a lot more to this photo of the former Miss Illinois than her stunning smile.

Karolina Jasko spotted a thin purple line on her thumbnail that turned out to be cancer.

A beauty queen who mistakenly thought a dark line beneath her fingernail was a bruise, has shared her terrifying story after discovering something much more sinister was lurking beneath the surface.

Karolina Jasko, 21, a beauty pageant winner, has a history of cancer in her family.

As a result, her mother — who had been diagnosed with melanoma twice before — had always taught Karolina to pay attention to her skin’s health.

But a routine visit to a nail salon in December 2016 led Karolina to discover her thorough checks had missed the most unlikely spot.

Karolina says her mother would always make sure she checked her skin for signs of melanoma.

During the visit, the technician spotted an unusual marking beneath her thumbnail which she said she initially brushed off as just a “bruise”.

“A few days later, my finger swelled up really bad, and I automatically thought I had some sort of infection from the nail salon,” she told the Daily Mail.

This took led her to a dermatologist who immediately insisted she have a biopsy on the unusual marking, which she explained was aperfectly straight thin vertical line that ran from the top to the bottom of her nail with a “purplish tint”.

Karolina Jasko spotted a thin purple line on her thumb nail that turned out to be cancer.

BIOPSY

The procedure involved removing part of her thumb removed so specialists could test for the cancer.

“It was overwhelming because everything happened so quick,” Karolina said.

“It was so scary … My mum was like, ‘I can’t believe that I never even thought that it could be in your nail’.”

Karolina Jasko is beauty pageant contestant.

DIAGNOSIS

The biopsy confirmed Karolina had a nail melanoma, also known as subungual melanoma, which occurs in the tissue of the nail bed.

Melanoma is one of the most aggressive and deadly forms of cancer if it is not caught in time.

To treat it, surgeons had to remove Karolina’s entire thumbnail, permanently costing her the fingernail.

Instead surgeons took a graft of skin from her groin to cover the area where it used to sit.

Doctors used skin from her groin to cover the area where her nail used to sit.

SHAME AFTER SURGERY

Straight out of surgery, Karolina said she spent months covering her thumb with a Band-Aid.

“I thought everyone was going to be staring, and it took a long time to get comfortable with it.”

In the years since, Karolina said she was much more open about her experience, with people claiming they “wouldn’t have even known if you didn’t tell me” about her nail.

“I want girls to know it’s OK to have a scar or a mole,” she said.

Karolina now dedicates her time to beauty pageants, winning Miss Illinois in 2018 and competing in Miss USA.

Karolina won Miss Illinois last year.

She has never let her missing thumbnail stop her from pursuing a career in the beauty industry.

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