ROANOKE, Va. – Like most of us, Billy Rinn spent a lot of time in the sun as a kid.
“When you’re a child or teenage years you don’t think about sunscreen,” Rinn said.
But decades later, that time in the sun came back to bite him in a big way: skin cancer.
“I got diagnosed in 2014 with just a small part on my ear,” he said.
After his initial bout with cancer, he thought he was in the clear. But in 2021, everything changed.
“It started here behind my left ear, then they did a lymph node, took that out. Then, I had a big spot on my abdomen, two spots on my left and right shoulder, two spots on my lung, one behind my lung, and then another lymph node,” he said.
Doctors gave him two weeks to live.
“This is melanoma, so melanoma is the worst kind of skin cancer you could get. It’s the deadliest kind of skin cancer,” he said.
But after a year and a half of treatments in New York, today, there’s no sign of the disease in Rinn’s body — so he’s living life to the fullest.
“Sold my house, sold everything, me and my wife bought this RV and went traveling,” he said.
Rinn is far from alone.
According to the Skin Cancer Foundation, more people are diagnosed with skin cancer each year in the U.S. than all other cancers combined.
And at least one in five Americans will develop skin cancer by the age of 70.
“One bad sunburn when you’re young doubles your chances of getting melanoma when you’re older,” Rinn said.
Rinn’s advice? Stay covered and wear sunscreen.
“I don’t know really what to say because you’re playing roulette. It could happen, it could not. The more time you spend in the sun, the more damage you get, the greater your chances are of hitting that number,” he said.