A TikTok video played a key role in one mother’s cancer diagnosis after it prompted her to see a doctor regarding a strange marking on her fingernail, SWNS reported.

Lauren Koltcz, 45, from North Royalton, Ohio, noticed a brown line on her left thumbnail, but thought it was caused by a vitamin deficiency.

"I had this nagging feeling it was something more than a vitamin deficiency," she said.

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When the brown line became thicker, the mother of two spoke to her nurse practitioner, who said it could be a fungal infection.

"I put some fungal medication on my thumb, but it didn't do anything," she said, as SWNS reported.

Then, in February 2025, Koltcz noticed the line spreading across her nail.

"I started researching online and found some TikTok videos from dermatologists," she recalled.

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In one video, a dermatologist implored those with brown lines on their nails to see a medical professional.

Koltcz booked an appointment at Cleveland Clinic, where doctors took a biopsy of the brown area.

The next day, she got a call from her doctor, Alison Vidimos, MD, who said they needed to do a biopsy.

"I was concerned because the pigmentation on her nail was very dark, there were different shades of brown, and the spot was wider than 3 millimeters," said Vidimos, who is chairman emeritus of Cleveland Clinic’s Department of Dermatology.

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The biopsy results came back four days later.

"I just couldn’t believe it. Everybody knows someone who’s had cancer, and now I was one of them," Koltcz said.

The results showed that Koltcz had subungual melanoma – a skin cancer that develops under the nail – but they had caught it at stage 0, meaning the melanoma was only in the top layer of the skin.

Subungual melanoma (nail melanoma) is a serious and rare type of skin cancer, accounting for 0.7% to 3.5% of all melanomas worldwide, according to Cleveland Clinic.

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It can impact any nail and discoloration doesn’t always occur, which is why it's so important to take note of any nail changes.

"When this type of cancer is caught early, there's over a 95% survival rate," Vidimos said in a press release from Cleveland Clinic. "But if it’s neglected and not diagnosed at an early stage, it can spread to the lymph nodes and make treatment more challenging."

Nail melanomas are often diagnosed late, according to the doctor, because people don’t think about checking their nails.

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Prompt surgery removed Koltcz’s cancer and some of the tissue around the area to ensure that no cancer cells remained.

While she currently shows no evidence of cancer, Koltcz will have regular follow-ups with her dermatologist.

"I just kept thinking, ‘How lucky am I that I caught it in time and had such great doctors to treat it?'"

Alice Marie Johnson has gone from prison to the White House, where she's leading the charge as President Donald Trump's pardon czar, and she can hardly believe the transformation.

The former Trump pardonee now works with the president's administration to bring hope to those still trapped in a broken system. 

Speaking to "My View" host Lara Trump, she laid out her vision for the role — finding non-violent offenders who deserve a second chance, who have paid their dues to society and who have been victims of lawfare.

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"There are laws that have to be changed because, even in my position, I'm not going to be able to find everyone," she said. 

"I am going to find as many as I possibly can find, but I'm also going to be advocating [for change] and looking at the things that are out there, on the books, that need to be changed, but to also do what the president has entrusted me to do, and let's find those individuals who need their second chance, those individuals who had lost hope in a system that was totally corrupt."

"We now know it's not about how much money you have. If you have a corrupt system in place, there is no one safe," she added.

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A series of unfortunate events, including her son's death, financial troubles and a divorce, led to Johnson's involvement with cocaine dealers in the 1990s in Memphis, Tennessee. While she claims she never "touched, saw or sold a single drug," she admitted to assisting in communications. 

Johnson was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, a sentence she was "absolutely not" prepared for, nor did she think it was "warranted," but she's thankful her situation caught President Trump's attention.

Trump commuted her life sentence in 2018 after she served 21 years in an Alabama prison but eventually gave her a full pardon in 2020.

The president appointed her to the pardon czar position earlier this year, tasking her with identifying the best pardon candidates and assessing their readiness to reintegrate into their communities.

"It's just incredible to me that my life would take a full-circle journey. Seven years ago, I was sitting in a prison cell…" she said. "…It's really easy for me because I've lived it, so the president has entrusted me with this mission."