When Danni Nulty’s friend pointed out a worrying mole on her face, she never imagined it would turn out to be melanoma.
A beauty therapist who is so opposed to irresponsible tanning that she wears factor 50 SPF and will not work with people who fail to protect their skin from sun damage was horrified to discover she had a malignant mole on her face.
After a decade of warning her clients of the dangers of skin cancer caused by tanning, Danni Nulty, 36, of Coventry, Warwickshire, was shocked when a fellow beautician advised her to get a mole on the left side of her face checked.
Despite her tanning being restricted to a few sunbeds when she was a teenager, Danni, who lives with her personal trainer boyfriend Dave Kirkland, 38, and their two-year-old cat, Chloe, saw a doctor, leading to a skin cancer diagnosis.
She said: “My friend Sarah McMaster asked if I’d ever had the mole checked, because she’d noticed it had got bigger.
“She made me promise to go to the doctor, so I booked an appointment but never gave it another thought.
“I knew it had grown, but it wasn’t itchy or raised and had never bothered me, so when the doctor suggested we get a second opinion and booked me an early morning hospital visit the following Sunday, I almost didn’t go because it was a weekend.”
Luckily for Danni, a beautician specialising in skincare and a business development manager at Bioactive Aesthetics, she made it to the hospital appointment, where doctors advised she would need to undergo a biopsy.
Just 10 days later, on November 5 2018, dermatologists confirmed that she had stage one melanoma skin cancer.
“I’m a redhead, half Irish and half Scottish, so with my colouring, I don’t tan and have never really been able to enjoy the sun,” she said.
What should you be looking for in a sunscreen? Dermatologist @dr_rachelabbott explains https://t.co/3RJVI6uV9b #sunsafety #heatwave #heatwaveuk pic.twitter.com/YY9trqyjg9
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She continued: “But for the last 10 years, I’ve always used factor 50 sun protection, so I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I thought, ‘I can’t have skin cancer, it’s impossible.’
“If you saw how white I am without fake tan, you’d think I was a zombie in an apocalypse movie.
“But there was a Macmillan cancer nurse in the room, so although I was in a daze, I knew this was serious.”
The doctors told Danni that although they had caught the cancer early, it was on the cusp between stages one and two.
“When I was 18 I had about a dozen sunbeds, but back then I didn’t realise how dangerous they were. I stopped as soon as I became more aware,” she said. “Still, you never expect this to happen to you.
“Now the big question was whether the cancer had already spread to my lymph nodes.”
Luckily for Danni, one of the 17 in every 100,000 people in Great Britain to be diagnosed with malignant melanoma every year – compared with just three per 100,000 in the mid 1970s – according to the NHS, it had not spread.
And on November 7 2018, she went under the knife at Hospital of St Cross, Rugby, Warwickshire.
Danni, who has been supported by the British Skin Foundation, continued: “As I lay there in the operating theatre, fully conscious as the surgeon cut out the mole and an inch of the skin surrounding it, I thought, ‘Nothing is worth this.'”
She added: “I’m so grateful to my friend, who told me to get my mole checked, because if I’d gone even for a few more weeks without seeing the doctor, it could have been a very different story.
“If the cancer had gone to stage two and reached my lymph nodes, I would have had to have chemotherapy, so the main thing I would say to anyone who notices any changes to a mole, however small is, ‘Get it checked straight away.’”
Danni who has been given the all clear, but will continue to be monitored by the hospital for another 12 months, admits she is now terrified of the sun.
When she and Dave went on a recent holiday to Cape Verde, she stayed covered-up in the shade and made sure her boyfriend, who is bald, applied sunscreen to his head.
“It’s not holidays that are the biggest risk, because people do use sunscreen and reapply it,” she said. “It’s the every day exposure and that’s the thing I’m most scared of now.
“I check myself every day for any changes to moles and although I am now more anxious about skin cancer, I am also so grateful for the outcome in my own case, which could have been so much worse.”
Rates of malignant melanoma are rising faster than any other type of common cancer in the UK, according to Dr Anjali Mahto, a consultant dermatologist and spokesperson for the British Skin Foundation, which recommends a whole-body self-examination monthly, after a shower or bath and in a well-lit room.
Its experts advise anyone spotting alterations to a mole, including a change in colour, shape or size, to see their doctor and get it checked.
“It is safe to go out in the sun but only if you’re wearing sunscreen,” said Dr Mahto. “You need a high protection SPF – 30 or more – to protect against UVB light and a cream with a 4- or 5-star circle logo to protect against the UVA rays. When checking, people should look for any new moles, a mole that looks very different to the others or any skin lesion that bleeds or fails to heal.”
For information, visit www.britishskinfoundation.org.uk