‘But I don’t even use sunbeds that often!’ I told the nurse.
I’d just been diagnosed with Stage 3 Melanoma – an aggressive type of skin cancer – and told my love of tanning was to blame.
It was a huge shock. I honestly had no idea they were dangerous.
You see warnings on cigarette packets, and photos of people with lung cancer, but you never see a picture of a person with skin cancer in a tanning shop.
I didn’t even think of myself as an excessive user. I might have gone two or three times a week before a holiday or night out. But then I wouldn’t go again for months.
‘That’s still a form of sunbed abuse,’ the nurse told me. She likened it to binge drinking – avoiding booze all week and then getting drunk on a Saturday night.
I was only 16 when I went on a sunbed for the first time. Everyone I knew did it – my mum, aunts, cousins and friends.
My mum was going to the tanning shop and asked if I wanted to go with her. I had a three-minute tan that first time and afterwards I felt great – like I was glowing.
I found out later that it’s actually illegal for tanning shops, beauty salons and other commercial premises in the UK to allow anyone under 18 to use a sunbed, but no one ever asked my age.
But I was hooked. I started tanning regularly. I’m very pale, with a lot of moles, so I felt like it gave my skin a base colour.
Everyone around me was doing it.
On the weekends, my friends and I would make a trip to our local salon. I rarely went alone – it was more of a social thing. If somebody else was going, I’d tag along.
I left school at 16 and went into hairdressing so there was a big focus on beauty. You got your hair done, you got your nails done and you got a tan.
I grew up in Belfast, which is one of the UK’s sunbed hotspots – according to charity Melanoma Focus, 37% of adults in Belfast use sunbeds. It’s just the done thing.
By the time I turned 20 I fell pregnant with my daughter Connie, now four, and during my pregnancy I didn’t go near sunbeds. To me it felt like smoking or drinking while pregnant – it was just something I didn’t think it was right to do.
But after giving birth I went back to the tanning shops. It felt like a wee treat and a bit of ‘me time’.
In the chaos of being a first-time mum, I found it was also a lot quicker than getting my nails or hair done – it was easier to fit in around childcare.
Then, in the summer of 2022 I noticed a black mole growing on my right cheek.
I’m a fairly moley person so at first I wasn’t too worried, but then it started looking different to my other moles – it kept scabbing over, dropping off, then growing again. This went on for a couple of months.
I sent photos to my GP. They weren’t worried either but they referred me to a dermatologist just to be on the safe side.
In September 2022 I had the mole removed at a dermatology clinic and sent away to be biopsied. It would take six weeks to get my results, and during that time I didn’t really think about it. There hadn’t been any red flags yet.
Finally, the clinic called me and invited me to go in for my results.
It was awkward to arrange childcare, so I asked them why I couldn’t get them over the phone.
They told me I needed to go in person and to bring someone with me. That’s when I first realised.
Driving to the clinic, I started to feel anxious. The phone call had unsettled me, something didn’t feel right.
At first, they said it looked like Stage 2 Melanoma and referred me to the Ulster Hospital, in Belfast, to have a larger section of tissue on my face – where the mole had been – removed.
They couldn’t tell me what my face would look like afterwards or how big the scar would be, but by that time my priority was staying alive.
I knew things were more serious than I’d first thought.
I had the surgery in February 2023 and also woke up with a scar on my neck where an associated lymph node had been removed – to test to see if the cancer had spread.
Waiting for the next set of results to find out if it had spread into my lymph nodes – six weeks felt like six years.
I was crying a lot, although of course I tried to hide my upset from Connie. I just told her mummy was poorly and needed to go to hospital to get better.
The results showed the melanoma had spread to my lymph nodes so it was upgraded to Stage 3 and I was referred to Belfast City Hospital’s Cancer Centre for MRI and CT scans to check it hadn’t spread anywhere else, which thankfully it hadn’t.
That’s when it really began to sink in that I had cancer. People think if they get a bad mole it will just be removed and that’s that, but melanoma means cancer.
My family and friends were a huge support, and also helped keep Connie occupied and entertained.
This month, I’ve come to the end of a year of targeted immunotherapy treatment, and I’m now cancer-free.
But it isn’t over – I’ll now have five years of monitoring scans every six months, to make sure the cancer doesn’t come back.
They will also do mole-mapping – it’s where I have to stand in my underwear and every single mole on my body is measured and photographed. They can then track any changes every time they check my moles.
My mum and other family members have stopped using sunbeds now. A lot of my friends have stopped too, but not all – people still think it won’t happen to them.
That’s what I thought until it happened to me.
It’s not just sunbeds – getting sunburnt is another risk factor for developing skin cancer, and I remember getting burnt on family holidays as a child.
One year, as a 10-year-old, in Egypt was particularly bad – I remember my shoulders were so blistered that my mum applied Greek yoghurt from the hotel bar to cool our skin.
We always think our sunburns are just something we need to quickly recover from, and never consider the long-term effects.
And now, my biggest fear now is not being around to see Connie grow up.
I’m a mum and she needs me. I’ve seen other people my age, with the same diagnosis, tragically pass away.
This is very real and skin cancer needs to be taken more seriously.
If I could travel back in time I’d tell my younger self that having a tan is just not worth it, and I would tell everyone else to look at everything you have – do you really want to play Russian roulette with your life?
As told to Jade Beecroft
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