The news came at a truly inopportune time — but with news like this, the timing is always bad. Pro golfer Brian Gay was playing at a PGA Tour Champions event in Jacksonville, Fla., when he got the call. He had just been diagnosed with skin cancer on his lip.
“As you can imagine, I was a bit off on the golf course after that,” he said. It was a Friday, back in the fall of 2024, and during that weekend, the five-time PGA Tour winner had to take some time to let the news sink in. But his thoughts were roiling. “I was just wondering: What does this mean? And what’s going to happen?”
The incidence of skin cancer has been steadily rising over the past three decades — mainly due to ultraviolet exposure. Brian, who is 54 and spends a lot of time in the sun due to the nature of his career, was informed that his diagnosis was squamous cell cancer, which is the second most common type of skin cancer, according to the Skin Cancer Foundation. About 1.8 million cases are diagnosed each year in the United States. The good news? It is curable when caught early on.
A chance encounter
When Brian asked about his options, the dermatologist mentioned only Mohs surgery, which left him concerned because the treatment would involve cutting away thin layers of skin.
“I’m on camera sometimes, and I just didn’t know what I was going to look like [after the surgery],” he said. “And besides that, I was turned off by the way they do it — you know, they kind of keep cutting until they figure they’ve got it all.”
He needed an alternative. But was there an equally effective option that didn’t involve surgery?
One day Kimberly, Brian’s agent and wife, fortuitously fell upon a commercial for an innovative, newer, nonsurgical procedure called GentleCure Image-Guided Superficial Radiotherapy (IGSRT). Just the name itself piqued their interest.
“I had a strong feeling that this was the solution,” Kimberly said, emphatically. “Brian really wasn’t comfortable with the surgery, but this — this was intriguing.”
A worry-free remedy
Using high-definition ultrasound to aim low-level X-rays to specific, targeted areas of the skin, GentleCure™ consists of a series of treatments that only last mere minutes each.
“You can see the progress on the screen during your sessions,” Brian pointed out. “There was nothing to be anxious about. No pain of any kind. No discomfort at all, either. And a couple of weeks in, the only side effect I recall was a little bit of a blister on my lip.”
The dermatology practice where Brian sought treatment, like more than 400 other dermatology practices around the country, partners with GentleCure by SkinCure Oncology to offer a proven treatment for common skin cancers. Both Brian and Kimberly encourage patients diagnosed with basal or squamous cell skin cancer to look into GentleCure™.
“It might not be for everybody, but you can always get a consultation and see if it’s for you,” Kimberly said. “Our daughter just got married in December, and Brian told me he could hardly think about what it’d be like if he had a big scar (or worse) on his face. Instead, he was able to walk her down the aisle and enjoy this important family moment without being self-conscious about any of that.”
To learn more, visit gentlecure.com
