Phone app spotted my skin cancer says sunbeds victim
Emma Proctor loved to top up her tan in her 20s but a mole on her back, right, later turned cancerous A FORMER tanning addict is warning people about sunbeds after a phone app alerted her to a cancerous mole.
Emma Proctor used sunbeds every other day throughout her 20s to keep her tan topped up. But now she has issued a warning to others to follow her example and stop using the UV lightemitting machines.
The 37- year- old mother of one said: “I am naturally very pale and saw other girls with tanned skin.
“I felt other people perceived this as a nice look at the time, around the 1990s and early- 2000s.
“As I was very pale, I needed to go on quite often as my tan would fade quickly.”
Emma, a businesswoman from Preston, cut out sunbeds a few years ago when her skin began to wrinkle.
Then last summer a mole on her back started to itch.
Emma said: “I didn’t think much of it at the time but then one day I realised there was a bit of blood.
“It was on my lower back late- in an extremely awkward position but with a mirror I managed to see that it was looking a little different.
“I talked to my partner and he agreed that it had definitely changed.”
Fearing that she might be bothering her GP with “something trivial”, Emma turned to a phone app called SkinVision, designed to track moles that could become cancerous.
The app prompted her to see her GP, who sent her straight to a specialist. She said: “He told me, ‘ If you have a sunbed at home, go straight home and give it away to your worst enemy’.” Tests showed Emma’s mole was a basal cell carcinoma, a skin cancer caused by UV light.
She had an area of skin the size of a 10p piece removed.
Emma, who has now been given the all- clear, said: “I embrace my pale skin now and protect it with factor 50.
“I feel quite silly now for doing what I did to my skin.”
Erik de Heus, of SkinVision, said: “I am happy we had the chance to support Emma in her journey from checking a mole to proper treatment.”