By Kristy MacKaben
As a teenager, Natalie Kraemer was a sun goddess. The 27-year-old Baltimore resident played sports outside in the spring and summer, landed a job as a lifeguard in her teens, and basked in the sun for hours at the swimming pool or on the beach.
“I was very much seeking the sun,” Kraemer admits.
Though she regularly used sunscreen, she admits she probably missed her ears and stayed in the sun too long.
“I guess I thought tanning in the summer was natural, and that’s what everybody should be doing,” Kraemer says. “It was a big thing to be tan in high school and college.”
But Kraemer paid the price for her years of sun worshipping much sooner than one might expect. At the age of 23, she was diagnosed with melanoma and had to have half of her right ear removed.
“It was very scary,” Kraemer says.
