The comedian Katherine Ryan has received a second skin cancer diagnosis after raising concerns about a mole on her arm.
Ryan attended a private clinic where a doctor who also works for the NHS dismissed her concerns about melanoma and gave her the all-clear, but she went back and a test revealed the mole was cancerous.
The 41-year-old standup was diagnosed with stage two melanoma in her 20s, after finding an irregular mole on her leg, which was removed.
She said on her podcast, Telling Everybody Everything: “The only reason that they agreed to remove it was because I went to a fancy, private place in South Kensington, and I paid them a grand.
“I don’t believe that on the NHS they ever would have removed this mole, because I don’t know how long ago, I’m looking through my emails to find out how long ago, I think six to eight months ago, I went to another private clinic and gave them £300 for a seven-minute consultation.
“I was in that room for seven minutes, and the doctor was like: ‘I do melanoma on the NHS, it’s all I do, I know all about skin cancer, I’m the man, this is not melanoma, goodbye.’
“He was really nice to me, and he gave me the news that I wanted, I think it’s really easy to take a diagnosis of ‘you’re healthy’ and just walk away. But the mole kept changing, and I know a lot about melanoma. I just felt like this mole wasn’t right.”
Ryan asked the doctor to remove the mole, but he recommended sending a sample off for histology first. He then phoned her to confirm it had come back showing early melanoma.
She said: “He was shocked. He’s like: ‘It doesn’t look like melanoma, but it is melanoma.’”
The Big Fat Quiz of the Year star said the doctor made an appointment to remove the mole completely. She later confirmed the mole’s removal in a post on TikTok, in which she shared pictures of it and urged others to get their moles checked.
Melanoma is a type of skin cancer, which can spread to other areas of the body. A new mole or a change in an existing mole can be a symptom of the condition. They are often an uneven shape with a mix of two or more colours, and moles that are sore, bleeding, itchy or crusty could be cancerous.
The main cause of melanoma is ultraviolet light, which comes from the sun and is used in sunbeds.
