Katherine Ryan reveals she’s been diagnosed with skin cancer for second time following misdiagnosis
She broke the news on her Telling Everybody Everything podcast
Jess Hardiman
Comedian Katherine Ryan has revealed she's been diagnosed with skin cancer, explaining how it felt like something 'wasn't right'.
Speaking on her Telling Everybody Everything podcast, she said: "I've had a mole on my arm - that I told you about last week - removed.
"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 know if on the NHS they ever would have removed this mole."
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But Ryan had issues even after going private, after a doctor mistakenly told her it wasn't cancerous.
"He gave me the news that I wanted!" she said.
"I think it's really easy to take a diagnosis of you're healthy and walk away, you go 'great I'm healthy' and you don't think about it again because that is the easiest news.
"But the mole kept changing - I know a lot about melanoma, I had a melanoma as a very young woman, stage two on my leg - and I've spoken about that before.
"Even that didn't look traditionally like melanoma to me, fair enough it had some discolouration and asymmetry and a bit of black and red. It was a flat mole, not that bad and not that big, but it was stage two melanoma so that was bad.
"I had to have full general anaesthetic and surgery to have a golf-ball size of my leg because - if you know about melanoma, you know it's a deadly form of skin cancer and it spreads quickly."
Ryan pressed doctors to look into it further, saying: "I just felt like this mole wasn't right.
"[...] I went in and I wanted the doctor to remove a bigger piece of it and stitch it up in a straight line.
"But even when he looked at it, he was like, 'Not melanoma, totally fine, I will do the shave and send it away for histology and if there's any borders that we missed, then we will do the deeper cut'."
It was later confirmed that they'd need to go for the deeper cut, as Ryan stressed the importance of pushing back if you're not convinced.
"It just feels crazy to me, like what could have happened if I hadn't been my own advocate - and I will continue to be my own advocate," she said.
"If I hadn't pushed, if I had taken that good answer the first time and walked away. Then I would have had melanoma just growing and spreading in my arm and I would say ''oh no the doctor says it's fine, it's fine'' and god knows how far that would have gone."
Ryan was previously diagnosed with stage 2 skin cancer back in 2004.
She added: "It's not ideal to have melanoma twice in your life and I obviously have a genetic predisposition, I am someone with type one, Celtic skin, I have over 100 moles.
"I don't go in the sun, I wear SPF all the time, I cover my body, I cover my arms, I cover my face, but here's my second go with melanoma that I know of! I'm thinking f**k what other moles do I need to get checked?"