‘A sunbed tan is just not worth it’ – Skin cancer survivor on the beauty ritual that’s ruining young lives

She says it was so normal to have a “base tan” that “everybody was doing it” and she had no idea of the risks involved.

Eight years later, aged just 24 and with a young daughter, Katie was diagnosed with an aggressive form of skin cancer that had already spread to her lymph nodes.

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Now, as she finishes a year of treatment, she wants to warn other sunbed users of the risks involved.

“I want people to know what skin cancer looks like and what it means,” says Katie (25), from Lisburn.

“Cigarette packets carry warnings — there’s photos of people with lung cancer.

“But you don’t walk into a sunbed shop and see posters showing people with skin cancer."

It’s illegal for tanning shops, beauty salons and other commercial premises to allow anyone under the age of 18 to use a sunbed in Northern Ireland, but Katie says her age was never checked.

“Nobody ever asked my age,” she says. “My mum went, my friends went, my aunts and cousins went. It was just normal.

“One day when I was 16 my mum asked if I wanted to go with her.

“My first session was three minutes and afterwards I felt great, like I was glowing.”

Katie, who grew up in west Belfast, started tanning regularly, saying she felt like it gave her skin “a base” and also made her feel more confident about her appearance.

“I left school at 16 and went into hairdressing and, of course, that’s all about beauty too,” she explains. “You got your nails done, you got your hair done and you got a tan.”

She was 20 when she fell pregnant with her daughter Connie (4), and during her pregnancy she didn’t go near sunbeds.

But as a busy young mum, she returned to the tanning shops, saying a sunbed session felt like “a bit of me time”.

“It was a wee treat to myself and it was quicker than getting my hair or nails done, so it was easier to fit around childcare,” she explains. “It was a way to give myself a boost.”

In summer 2022, Katie noticed a black mole was growing on her right cheek.

She recalls: “I’m quite a moley person so at first I wasn’t too worried, but then it started looking different to my other moles.

“It kept scabbing over, dropping off and then growing back again.”

Katie sent photos to her GP, who didn’t think it looked dangerous but referred her to a dermatologist to be on the safe side.

At the Orthoderm clinic in Hillsborough, the mole was removed and sent away to be biopsied.

“The clinic called me and invited me to go in for my results,” says Katie.

“I asked them why I couldn’t get them over the phone because it was awkward to arrange childcare.

“They said I needed to go in-person and told me to bring someone with me. That was the red flag.”

Katie was told she had stage 2 melanoma and was referred to the Ulster Hospital to have a larger section of tissue on her face — where the mole had been — removed.

She underwent the surgery in February 2023 and also woke up with a scar on her neck where an associated lymph node had been removed.

Waiting for the next set of results, Katie says “six weeks felt like six years”.

“I was crying a lot, although of course I tried to hide my upset from Connie,” she remembers.

“I just told her mummy was poorly and needed to go to hospital to get better.”

When the results showed the melanoma had spread to Katie’s lymph nodes, her cancer was upgraded to stage 3 and she was referred to Belfast City Hospital’s Cancer Centre for MRI and CT scans to check it hadn’t spread anywhere else.

“That’s when it really began to sink in that I had cancer,” she says. “People think if they get a bad mole it will just be removed and that’s that, but melanoma means cancer.

“They also found I had a genetic mutation that made it more likely the disease would return.”

Katie underwent a year of targeted immunotherapy treatment, which finishes this month.

She will then begin five years of monitoring scans every six months and mole-mapping, where every mole on her body is measured and photographed.

“My mum and other family members have stopped using sunbeds now,” she says. “A lot of my friends have stopped too — but people still think it won’t happen to them.

“That’s what I thought until it happened to me.

“I wasn’t even a continuous user. I might have had two or three sessions a week before a holiday or night out, but then gone months without tanning at all. When I said that to a nurse at the hospital, she told me that’s still a form of abusing sunbeds — like if you don’t drink during the week and then binge drink at weekends.”

Getting sunburnt is another risk factor for developing skin cancer.

​Katie remembers she and her sister Emma (23) burning on family holidays.

“One year in Egypt was particularly bad, my shoulders really blistered,” she says. “I remember mum getting Greek yoghurt from the hotel bar to cool our skin.”

Susanna Daniels, CEO of Melanoma Focus, says: “The proliferation of sunbed use across the UK is alarmingly high and it’s shocking that so many people don’t realise how dangerous they are.

“Melanoma skin cancer rates are rising in the UK and it’s an increasingly serious health concern.”

Katie says if she could travel back in time, she would tell her younger self that having a tan “is just not worth it”.

Her biggest fear now is not being around to see Connie grow up.

“I’m a mum — she needs me,” Katie adds. “I’ve seen other people my age, with the same diagnosis, tragically pass away. This is very real and skin cancer needs to be taken more seriously.”