I Used To Think Being Suntanned Was Hot. Then I Had A Skin Check.
To find out even more ways to look (and feel) good while protecting your skin, check out Cancer Council's tips here: https://www.cancer.org.au/end-the-trend/sun-protection-looks-good-on-you
Skin cancer was, to me, a completely foreign concept. I’d heard of it, sure, but it felt like a faraway thing that would never be part of my story. I know that sounds stupid because the stats were everywhere. Two in three people in Australia will get melanoma. Two in three. Two in three. But I was focusing on the ‘Australia’ part. Plus, I never intentionally burned myself. I would just be going about my day not thinking about the sun and would end up roasted. Painful patches of pink and peely bits all over my skin were just an annoying side-effect of enjoying the sunshine. Or so I thought.
You see, I’m from the UK. I grew up in a particularly grey patch of Yorkshire where sunshine made a twice-yearly cameo appearance at best. When I went on holidays overseas I slapped on sunscreen and sometimes (read: barely) topped up while I baked my skin so I could come back home with a tan. Outside of holidays, sunscreen and I were barely acquaintances. And I genuinely didn’t clock that there was sun protection beyond SPF, so never even considered whacking on a hat or a rashie.
Then I moved to Australia and upped my game a smidge more, just because I could physically see the sun more. I didn’t spend as much time tanning on the beach, but that was just because it was so damn hot. I quickly learnt that I could burn in Australia in a matter of minutes, constantly getting caught out with roasted shoulders and a bright red scalp. I ended up buying more Aloe Vera to soothe burns than I did about preventing getting burnt in the first place. But then I had the biggest of wake-up calls.
In March 2020 I had a big week. I had my 26th birthday, Australia went into its first COVID lockdown and I was told I had melanoma.
So when I say ‘big’ week, I really mean the worst week of my life.
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I had only booked in for a skin cancer check – my first one ever – because one of my friends was dealing with her own melanoma journey (and raising awareness like a trooper), so I felt like I should be supportive and book in.
Off I popped to the dermatologist to get my mole mapping done, and the doctor was lovely. She checked over every inch of me, starting on the right side of my face and heading down that whole side of my body. Using her little light-up dermatoscope she analysed every mole and wonky freckle on me and as she was heading up my left side she prematurely said, “Think we’re looking all good here,” before stopping on my left cheek.
“Ah. This one will definitely need a biopsy.”
It was a mole I had barely noticed on my cheek. It wasn’t sore or funky shaped and I looked at it every damn day. Surely this one wasn’t dodgy?
The doctor numbed my face with anesthetic and took what looked like a biro pen to my cheek, screwing it down into my flesh to pull out a perfect plug of my skin. She stitched up the hole and packaged up the plug to be sent off for testing.
The fortnight-long wait followed, and I was so sure that nothing bad would actually be happening that I pushed it out of my head. Plus I was massively distracted by the rest of the world. Coronavirus was spreading fast and precisely everyone was freaking out about what that meant.
By the time I got the call up to come back to the dermatologist to get my stitches out and pick up my results, everything had changed. Masks were on. Screens were up in reception. The welcome mints and stacks of magazines had disappeared. We were officially in lockdown and everyone was figuring out what that looked like, how to act and what to be afraid of.
I was ushered to a chair painfully far away from her, as we attempted social distancing.
“We have got the results back for the mole on your face. I’m afraid you have melanoma.”
My heart instantly dropped and suddenly breathing felt far too complicated to manage.
“Melanoma? As in skin cancer?”
“Yes, that’s correct. Your results have concluded that there was an in-situ melanoma found within your biopsy.”
At this point, I couldn’t hold back my tears any longer and just crumbled in the chair. A supercut of every idiotic moment I had spent unprotected in the sun played in my head. That time I said I didn’t need to put sunscreen on because I was just ‘popping outside for a mo’, another time I stayed sunbathing even though I could feel my skin catching because I was desperate to be tanned for an upcoming event, and unwrapping a beach brolly for Christmas and stupidly thinking ‘I don’t need one of these’. All of those split-second decisions and warped views of what would make me look better had led me to this. To cancer.
She went on to explain that the cancer was still ‘skin deep’, meaning it was an operable fix (phew), but that could change at literally any moment, so I needed to organise surgery ASAP. But with the recent announcement that elective surgeries were no longer happening across Australia, I had no idea how that was going to impact me trying to get this thing chopped out of my face.
But I needed to do something else first: Tell my family.
The second you are told you have cancer, all you want to do is hug your mum. And because we had been plunged into a lockdown that week, it was the one thing I legally couldn’t do at that moment – even though she was just 6kms up the road.
The next hurdle was trying to navigate the medical landscape. As this would be the first operation I’ve ever had in Australia, I had no idea what I was doing. Frantically called hospitals, surgeons and my health insurance providers, only to be told that I didn’t have any sort of cover for cancer treatments and that now I had flagged with them that I had melanoma, I wouldn’t be covered for any cancer treatments for 12 months, even if I upgraded my cover.
Marvellous. This meant I had to go private with my surgery and it was set to cost over $4,000 all up. While that was a big wad of money, I can’t tell you how much you’ll want to speed things up after a melanoma diagnosis. All I could think about, day and night, was that there was an evil cancerous blob on my face that could be sinking into my bloodstream any second and wreaking havoc on my health.
So I booked my surgery for the next available slot and spent the rest of my time resisting the urge to not snip the fucker out myself.
The surgery was about an hour and a half long, with the left side of my face filled with painful local anesthetic injections before the surgeon got to work slicing and dicing my face. While the mole was only small, you need to remove 12 layers down and about 3 inches wide to be sure to get out any parts that may have been compromised with cancer cells.
And because it was on my face, they didn’t know which way my cut would go. I was low-key hoping for a slice that ran just below my cheekbone so it wouldn’t be so obvious, but when they made the first cut it was decided that a line straight down my cheek would be the best option.
After 90 minutes, 30 stitches and half a numb face, I left the surgery looking like a swollen pirate.
Strangely, after the surgery I felt more shaken than I did before.
Even though the likelihood was that all of the cancer would have been removed, I think I had been bottling up my bravery throughout this whole time. I found myself touching my face and bursting into tears, not because anything was in pain, but because I had a tangible ex-cancerous slice now. It was also a reminder that literally looked back at me in the mirror that I could have prevented this. If I wasn’t so damn silly and bought into the BS that looking tanned was more desirable than protecting my skin, then perhaps I wouldn’t be here crying while I stared at my scar.
I was asked by my surgeon to film the bandage removal in case there was anything dodgy underneath that would need to be checked, so I now have footage of the moment I removed my surgery dressings and saw my scar for the first time. You can see it too on the second slide.
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Once I had my stitches out all I had to focus on was scar management (which, if you didn’t know involves strapping a sausage of silicone to your face every day and night) and making sure I had a proper sun-safe routine to prevent any further melanoma dramas.
Going through this ordeal has, without a doubt, completely changed my life. Getting skin cancer is terrifying and it also scares the crap out of your loved ones – something that was truly awful to see. But the silver lining of going through this all is the realisation that most melanomas are completely preventable. I know I ‘knew’ that before, but there’s nothing like living through something like that to make you the most proactive sun-safety ambassador around.
Now I live by these eight very important (and very easy-to-action) rules. Rules that I would be delighted if you take on/pinch/copy and paste into your own life so you don’t have to have your own scary skin cancer story.
My Sun Smart Rules:
- Stop thinking that suntanning is a good idea. Damaged skin is not beautiful skin – beautiful skin is embracing your natural skin tone (whatever colour you have been blessed with) and protecting it from all that you can. Wrinkles, sun spots and leathery, unhappy skin are avoidable if you’re properly sun safe, as is skin cancer. So don’t aim for a suntan, instead aim to keep your skin safe.
- Never leave the house without sunscreen on your face and body. Yep, even if it’s a shady, rainy day, I lather on two tablespoons of sunscreen for my face, ears and neck and about four tablespoons worth for the rest of my body. These are both always SPF50+.
- Bring sunscreen with you for top-ups throughout the day – you can get cute baby bottles to pop in your bag, desk drawer and car so you’re never without some SPF.
- Lean into sun-smart fashion. I’ve never owned more wide-brimmed hats in my life, and I’m thrilled. Big, floppy thick hats that protect your scalp and face paired with long-sleeved, breezy shirts are my go-to look now, and they should be yours too.
- Invest in the good sunglasses. While cheapo trendy specs might be good in a pinch, you want your most used sunnies to be big, polarised and have UV protection to keep your precious peepers safe.
- Never go suntanning. Even though I now live at the beach, I will cover myself in sunscreen, let it soak in and then go for a swim. Once I’m out of the water I reapply sunscreen, slip on a big linen shirt and sit in a shady spot. It’s still all the loveliness of being at the beach, but I don’t traumatise my skin and can stay cool out of the sun.
- Offer sunscreen and sun-safe accessories to absolutely everyone, all the time. Some people are just starting their diligent sunscreen era, so I am always on hand to offer sunscreen to anyone who wants a top-up and if you ever need a hat, CALL ME.
- Tell people my melanoma story so they don’t have to have their own. I used to be embarrassed, maybe even a little bit ashamed of getting melanoma. It’s a preventable disease so it’s easy to plonk the guilt on yourself, but now I know that having melanoma means I feel so much more passionate about helping other people avoid it. I tell the truth about what happened to me so others learn and take more care of their skin. Even if I’ve only encouraged one person to be sun-safe, it will have all been worth it.