Skin cancer at 34

For as long as she can remember, Kate had a “weird-looking” freckle on her left ankle.

“My uncle, who had a few melanomas taken out, would always comment on it in my teenage years, like ‘Oh that’s an interesting one, keep an eye on that’,” she recalls. “But,” she adds, “I never thought much about it because it never changed to my eye.”

Like most teens back then, Kate wasn’t too concerned about covering up. Wearing sunscreen wasn’t a habit either. “I never would lay in the sun and tan … [but] I never really protected my skin properly.”

It wasn’t until Kate’s mum encouraged her to visit a skin health doctor for a check-up in her early 30s that things started to change.

Initial check-ups were uneventful, but on a return visit, her doctor became worried about the freckle.

“She spent more time looking at it ... I could tell she was very concerned.”

When testing confirmed melanoma, Kate’s mind spiralled. “I didn’t expect it at all. I [thought], ‘I’m young, does this actually happen to young people?’”

Doctors cut out the melanoma and some surrounding skin in the hope that they’d remove all the cancer cells.

It was several anxious weeks of surgery, healing and waiting for results.

“It was very overwhelming and the unknown was very scary.

“I know the reality of cancer.” (Kate’s dad passed away from prostate cancer when she was 30.) “My mind thought, ‘We’ve dealt with this and had a bad outcome, what’s my outcome going to be?’”

With a young family stuck in COVID-19 lockdown, life was hard. But, Kate also couldn’t let her thoughts consume her. “I was trying to be calm [and] get on with everyday life.”

Eventually, good news brought relief. Doctors had caught Kate’s melanoma early and the surgery was successful. “The results came back and it hadn’t spread so they’d gotten it all,” she says.