A black mark
My mole might have killed me…
Stepping out of the shower, I dried myself with the towel and caught sight of my back in the mirror.
That’s strange, I thought. A mole on my back had got bigger and darker, too.
I knew the risks of skin cancer and being fair-skinned I always wore suncream and never used tanning beds.
‘Can you look at this?’ I asked my fiance, Nick, 32.
‘That doesn’t look right, get it checked out,’ he insisted
So, in June 2016, I went and saw my GP, who referred me to a dermatologist, who told me it was nothing to worry about. Phew!
Six months on and the mole got so dark it was almost black.
But I’d been told not to panic, so I didn’t worry about it.
Though, by early 2017, it’d started itching – so I went back to the dermatologist, who agreed to remove it.
A week later, in February last year, I had a small procedure to remove the mole. ‘We’ll do a biopsy,’ the dermatologist said. ‘But I’m sure it’s nothing.’
My mind was already racing, though.
I’d read about melanoma and I knew how serious it could be. Deadly even.
But I always covered up in the sun and didn’t sit out in it for too long.
Then, 10 days later, I got a call at my job as a HR administrator in the NHS.
‘You need to come in tomorrow. And bring someone,’ a doctor said. I felt numb. I wanted to call my mum, Karen, 55, but she was away and she’d only worry.
So I asked Nick to leave work early and come with me.
At the appointment at Kingston Hospital, I was a bag of nerves. I was actually trembling. ‘I’m really sorry,’ the consultant started. ‘You have stage-two melanoma.’
And it was so deep in my skin that there was a chance it was spreading. I tried to speak but couldn’t. The word ‘melanoma’ just echoed through my head. Just 23 and I had cancer! ‘You’ll need to have two surgeries,’ I was told. One to remove the cancer and surrounding tissue. And another for a biopsy to check for cancer in my lymph nodes. I went completely numb and in a daze. ‘We’ll get through
this together,’ Nick reassured me. In May, I had the ops.
And, devastatingly, one of my lymph nodes tested positive. The cancer had spread. My whole world started crumbling around me.
To me, it felt like a death sentence.
‘I won’t get to marry Nick or live to have children,’ I said, devastated.
But the doctors were hopeful.
‘We’ve caught it early and we removed the cancerous lymph node,’ I was told.
It meant that I didn’t need to have any further treatment.
And then, in a flash, I went from devastation to relief.
Although the cancer had spread, it’d been removed and I was cancer-free. I’d had a lucky escape. ‘I can’t thank you enough,’ I told the doctors.
Now I always check my moles religiously and if I find one that looks a bit strange, I go straight to my GP.
So far, I’ve only found one dodgy mole and I had it removed immediately.
Thankfully, the rest have come back clear.
I also have to avoid the sun and I smother myself in high-factor suncream every day.
I just can’t afford to take any chances – not even in the winter.
I have scans every three months to check my lymph nodes and, so far, everything has come back clear. I feel so lucky. If I hadn’t have got that mole checked out when I did, who knows what might’ve happened..?
It just doesn’t bear thinking about.
Now Nick and I are planning our wedding for October this year.
And when we book our honeymoon, we’ll steer clear of sunny climates.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s just not worth the risk.
I can’t afford to take chances – not even in winter