Photo of Grandfather Posted Online Saves His Life After Friends Spot Cancer
When Sarah Frei, 30, posted a photo of her 91-year-old grandfather John Rzeppa and her brother’s babies on Instagram, she had no idea it would help to save his life.
The family was together for Thanksgiving, and snapped the adorable photo to commemorate the gathering.
But soon after Frei posted the image on Instagram, one of her followers, Dr. Jennifer Mancuso, noticed something alarming.
Frei’s grandpa had a large mark on his forehead. Mancuso, a friend of Frei’s from high school and a board-certified dermatologist, looked back through a few of her friend’s older posts and realized the mark had grown.
Mancuso had immediately recognized the mark as melanoma.
“I was scrolling through Instagram one morning and I saw this picture of Sarah’s grandpa and I’ve seen pictures of him before, but he had this very obvious melanoma on his forehead. I think anyone would recognize it with any amount of training. I looked back at some older pictures and it was clear it was growing.”
Mancuso knew she had to tell Frei as soon as possible, so she sent her a message.
Upon reading the message, Frei was alarmed to say the least, and told her mother Linda Renema.
While the family had known about the mark, they’d had it biopsied in the past and doctors determined it was nothing more than an age spot.
“When we checked and biopsied it a few years ago, they said it was just an age spot, not to worry about it,” Renema said. “They did remove it with dry ice and it kind of disappeared and then gradually started to come back. But I wasn’t concerned because they told me it was an age spot. In retrospect, I wish I had been.”
After a visit to the doctor to have the mark looked at, doctors confirmed their worst fears: it was skin cancer.
But Rzeppa has always been a fighter, having previously survived prostate cancer and and two heart attacks. And because they’d caught it in time, doctors successfully removed 100 percent of the cancer.
“What he said to me was that (he) just wanted to get it taken care of and get it over with, and that it was a relief to take care of it,” Frei said.
Rzeppa was able to get the cancer removed in time for Frei’s wedding on April 28. Now, she and her family are forever grateful for the power of social media.
“My mom and I have talked about this a few times … It’s amazing how social media has created this platform for good things to come from it,” Frei said.
“I think more and more, social media is going to be playing a bigger part in health care,” Renema agreed. “And obviously it worked for good this time.”
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