Sisters who paid a cruel price for their idyllic sunny summers
Their story’s tragic proof you DON’T have to go abroad to get skin cancer
As CHILDREN, Jacqueline Dacey and her sister Dawn spent most of their time outside. summers involved playing in the fields around their home in West sussex, jumping in and out of the family’s swimming pool and riding horses.
It was idyllic — but there was one problem. No one thought to protect their delicate skin from the British sun.
‘We never, ever wore sunscreen,’ says Jacqs, as she calls herself. ‘If we got burnt we might put on a bit of after-sun, then go back out again.’
This was in the sixties and seventies and, like many people, the family didn’t realise the risks. But the sisters have paid the most terrible price.
In 2008, when she was 47, Dawn, a mother of three, had what appeared to be a crusty brown mole, the size of a pencil eraser, removed from her back.
‘Tests revealed it was malignant melanoma, the most serious form of skin cancer,’ recalls Jacqs, 57.
‘While sporty as an adult — she had done several triathlons — Dawn was not a sunbather as such, so she thought once it had been removed, that was that.’
But in November 2013 Dawn became seriously unwell. ‘Almost out of the blue she started complaining of bad headaches and felt very dizzy,’ recalls Jacqs, a farm administrative assistant who lives in West sussex.
Dawn’s GP referred her for an MRI and a brain scan. The cancer had returned — she now had two tumours in her brain and another on a kidney.
Within two weeks, Dawn — ‘who was about as fit as it is possible to be’, says her sister proudly — had become so weak she couldn’t move from her bed and was told she might have only weeks to live.
WATCHING Dawn fading in front of their eyes plunged the family into shock. Weeks after Dawn’s terminal diagnosis, Jacqs’s halfsister sami suggested that Jacqs, too, should have her skin checked.
so, in May 2014, Jacqs visited a mole clinic, hoping for peace of mind. The results were anything but: she had a malignant melanoma on her chest. she needed to have it surgically removed within a fortnight.
‘I’d noticed a new flat brown cluster just above my bra some months before,’ she says. ‘I thought: “That’s weird,” but didn’t do anything about it.
‘It was a different shade of brown from the others. It was only 0.33mm across but the doctor said it was removed just in time.
‘It was frightening to think that if I hadn’t got checked when I did, I could so easily have been in the same situation as Dawn.’
Doctors could not see an immediate genetic link that might explain the sisters’ cancer — but listening to the account of their sun exposure left them pretty sure about the cause: their summers in the UK without sun protection.
Malignant melanoma occurs in the melanocytes — the pigmentcontaining cells of the skin. The cancer causes these cells to proliferate and spread through the skin.
It is the most serious form of skin cancer because it can quickly travel to other parts of the body and can kill. There are now 15,000 cases a year in this country, and the number of cases has doubled since 1995.
According to the latest statistics from Cancer Research UK, skin cancer causes more than 2,400 deaths a year nationwide.
Part of the reason is people’s refusal to accept that sun in this country can still be dangerous.
Dr Justine Hextall, a consultant dermatologist at Western sussex Hospitals, feels frustrated that there is still a perception of malignant melanoma as a disease that afflicts only devoted sunbathers who travel abroad.
‘There are still people who think that the sun isn’t hot enough to cause skin cancer in this country,’ she says. ‘But sun exposure here is enough to cause skin cancer — I have patients with malignant melanoma who have never been abroad.
‘Cases are especially high by the coast, where people might be outside more or spend time by the water, which reflects the sun.
‘Yet surveys show many people continue not to wear sunscreen when the suns shines in the UK.’
Most cases occur in over-65s but malignant melanoma is th most common cancer among those aged 15-35. ‘It is rare in children but I have seen a 16-year-old and a 19-year-old with a melanoma,’ says Dr Hextall.
some people — those with red hair and pale skin, for example — are more at risk than others, but having dark or olive skin is no guarantee that you won’t get it.
Last year, a study published in Nature Publications found that having a single copy of the ‘ginger’ gene MRC1 may increase the risk of skin cancer, even among people who don’t have red hair, and there is no way to know if you have it.
‘Having darker skin is like having an sPF on your skin — it means you are less likely to get malignant melanoma but it doesn’t mean you can do without sunscreen,’ says Dr Hextall. ‘Bob Marley died from skin cancer.’
Your chance of getting skin cancer depends on several factors. some are genetically more prone to the disease, but behavioural influences, such as whether you had a lot of sun exposure as a child, can also have an impact. According to Cancer Research UK, 86 per cent of cases are preventable.
‘There are different types of melanoma, and while some are directly linked to sunburn and occur in areas that are exposed to the sun, others may occur in areas which aren’t,’ says Dr Hextall.
Aside from surgery, melanoma is sometimes treated with either immunotherapy or antibody treatment — both of which harness the body’s own immune system — or, less often, with chemotherapy.
Being aware of the symptoms and reacting to them is vital, as early diagnosis makes melanoma much easier to treat.
‘I wish every case I saw was at an early stage, but it isn’t. And men are especially slow at going to the doctor,’ says Dr Hextall.
That is why men make up a disproportionate percentage of the deaths from melanoma — 58 per cent, compared with 42 per cent for women, even though the cancer is slightly more common among women.
Dawn defied doctors’ expectations and survived for 22 months before dying in 2015, aged 54, at home surrounded by her family: husband Johnny, children Kerry, 26, Esme, 24, and Guy, 18, and the family dog Dizzy.
FoR Jacqs, the memory is still raw. ‘she was so full of life and yet so kind — there simply aren’t enough people like her in this world.’ It was also heartbreaking for her parents, in their 80s, to lose one daughter to skin cancer and have another develop it.
Jacqs is grateful that her malignant melanoma was caught when it was. she now has checks every three months.
she also worries about her grown-up son, a pilot, although he is careful in the sun.
‘The awful truth is that if it wasn’t for what happened to Dawn, I would never have thought to get my moles checked and there is every chance that I would now be dead, too,’ she says.
‘I want to tell people, don’t get sunburnt, do use sunscreen and protect your children, too. The alternative is terrifying.’