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Rachael Green, a 30-year-old mother, knew that the mole growing on her leg for the past two years was abnormal. The initially small, brown spot had increased in size, and as time passed, its color had begun changing.
“It wasn’t a regular shape,” Green recalled, “not a perfect circle and the colors weren’t consistent, they were a mixture of light brown and dark brown. I kept saying I was going to get it checked a number of times but never did.”
It was only after Green watched an episode of Holby City, a medical drama that aired on the BBC, where a character with a similar, strange growth on her leg was diagnosed with cancer.
Green went to the hospital immediately after watching the episode.
“I was terrified while waiting for the results [of the biopsy she’d had done of her spot] but when they came back it really shocked,” Green said of her experience.
She did, in fact, have skin cancer. Her mole was a symptom of a deadly form of melanoma.
Green’s cancer was, thankfully, well-contained and her doctors were able to remove the large mole on her leg without much problem. She will have to keep “an eye out for any more moles in the future and check on [her] lymph nodes for lumps” in the future.
Although Green is now cancer-free, she’s still terrified. “I never thought the mole on my leg would have been skin cancer,” she confessed, “it really terrified me that I didn't get it looked at before, it could have been so much worse.”
Green realizes now, however, that her affinity for tanning and going to tanning beds was probably the culprit of her disease. The prospect of remaining in the shade in the future does somewhat disappoint Green, but she realizes that she’s very lucky to be alive and is now very “protective of [her] daughter whenever she’s in the sun.”
“I don’t want this to happen to her and hope other people are more conscious of protecting their skin too,” she said.
