Comedian and BBC star Katherine Ryan has been diagnosed with skin cancer for the second time and has undergone surgery to remove a cancerous mole – and now she has good news
Katherine Ryan has shared a important health update after being diagnosed with skin cancer for a second time.
The 41-year-old comedian, who was first diagnosed with melanoma in 2004, has revealed she had been diagnosed with the cancer for a second time. She was misdiagnosed by a doctor who initially thought the unusual mole on her arm was not cancerous – but later confirmed it was.
The Would I Lie To You? star has now undergone surgery to remove the cancerous mole from her arm. She had the mole removed privately but then had to undergo another op in the same week to remove tissue from the surrounding area after the was discovered to be cancerous.
She has now taken to Instagram to share some good news with her followers from her hospital bed. She shared a snap of her swollen arm and the drip attached to it, alongside the caption: “This is going so well by the way and should heal flat [plaster emoji]”.
The mum-of-three showed fans what the mole had looked like in another snap, taken before she had it removed. She wrote: “Here’s a photo of the melanoma (which really does not look like melanoma) in the office before they took it off.”
She had her second op on Monday (March 24) and posted a photo of her arm, covered by a plaster. “Done,” she wrote with a tick and a red heart emoji, confirming the op was successful.
Katherine first shared her second cancer diagnosis earlier this month, during an episode of her Telling Everybody Everything podcast. She admitted she was “really worried” about it and explained how she had grown concerned about the mole as it kept changing.
“I know you should never google things but I’m actually really worried,” she explained. “Normally I’m that positive person. I think it’s really easy to take a diagnosis of ‘you’re healthy’ and walk away.
“But the mole kept changing, I know a lot about melanoma, I had melanoma as a very young woman – aged 21 – on my leg, I’ve spoken about that before. It was flat, it wasn’t that big but it was melanoma. It is a deadly form of skin cancer and it does spread quickly.
“I just thought that this mole wasn’t right. It’s on my arm. I showed pictures of it on my social media. I went in and I wanted the doctor to remove it and stitch it up in a straight line.
“But even when he looked at it, he was like, ‘it’s not melanoma, it’s totally fine, I will do a shave and send it away for testing’.” She added: “And he rang me today and it did come back as melanoma. Early melanoma. The doctor was shocked and told me I need to go back.
She went on: “It’s early melanoma and [the doctor] was shocked because it doesn’t look like melanoma but it is. He said ‘you need to come back on Monday’, which I don’t have time on Monday but luckily he gave me some time in the afternoon.”
“It’s crazy what could have happened if I didn’t continue to be my own advocate and I will continue to be my own advocate… 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 on my arm.”
She revealed she paid to have the mole removed from her arm before learning it was cancerous. She claimed the only reason they agreed to remove it was “went to a fancy private place in South Kensington and I paid them a grand.”
Katherine was just 21 years old when she was first diagnosed with melanoma. She had a “golf-ball-sized” lump removed from her leg.
“The cancer wasn’t that serious,” the comic said of her first diagnosis. “It wasn’t into my lymph nodes, I didn’t have to have chemotherapy. It did recur, but it was easily dealt with. I feel like I was really lucky just to get that lesson, that little smack on the a**e of ‘Hey, wait a minute. Listen to your body, here.’”
The TV star tied the knot with long-term boyfriend Bobby Kootstra in 2019. The pair share son Fred, three, and daughter Fenna, two, and Katherine has 15-year-old Violet from a past relationship.
According to the NHS website, melanoma is a type of skin cancer that can spread to other areas of the body. it says a new mole or a change in an existing mole can be a symptom of the condition.
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
