Comedian Katherine Ryan has reassured fans with a health update following her second surgery for skin cancer. The 41-year-old revealed last week that doctors had discovered a cancerous mole on her arm, marking her second experience with melanoma after previously having one removed when she was 21. After undergoing a private procedure to remove the mole, experts confirmed it was cancerous, leading to a second surgery to extract more of the surrounding tissue.
On Friday, the mum-of-three took to Instagram to share her recovery progress, posting a photo of her bandaged arm. Updating her followers, she captioned the image: “Done,” accompanied by a tick and red heart emoji. She added reassuringly: “This is going so well, by the way, and should heal flat.” In another post, she shared a before-surgery photo of the melanoma, noting: “Here’s a photo of the melanoma (which really does not look like melanoma) in the office before they took it off.”
Last week, Katherine bravely opened up about the skin cancer diagnosis on the latest episode of her Telling Everybody Everything podcast. The star explained that she had seen a doctor after she became concerned about a mole on her arm, however, she said she was initially given the all-clear. "I know you should never Google things, but I’m actually really worried. Normally, I’m that positive person," she said on the podcast. "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," she continued.
She went on: "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’.
"And he rang me today and it did come back as melanoma," she revealed. Katherine hasn't yet revealed if she will need any further treatment other than surgery to treat the cancer. According to the NHS website: "how melanoma is treated depends on where it is, if it has spread to other areas of your body and your general health. Surgery is the main treatment."
They describe Melanoma as "a type of skin cancer that can spread to other areas of the body." The main cause of melanoma is ultraviolet light, which comes from the sun and is used in sunbeds. Your chances of getting melanoma can be increased by factors including your age and having pale skin, a large number of moles and a family history of skin cancer.
