As Preston recorded its hottest temperatures since the 1960s, thousands were out sunbathing and working on their tans.
But in the sun lies a potentially deadly danger, as 21-year-old Lancashire Evening Post reporter Stef Beaumont found out. She tells her story…

My fists squeezed into little balls as I felt the needle prick my leg. I have always been a softie with needles.

I had noticed a mole on my thigh had started to change. Secretly I kept telling myself that it was my imagination, but something felt wrong every time I looked at it.

Now here I was in hospital having a biopsy.

I didn’t feel ill or have any symptoms but I started to suspect something wasn’t right after I had read an article about skin cancer.
I thought that one of the photographs looked like the “freckle” on my leg, which I had had since I could remember.

I didn’t abuse sunbeds or refuse to use sun lotion. I took sunny holidays like anybody else. Admittedly I had used a sunbed a few months before to give me a base tan before I went away so that I didn’t burn to a crisp, because, like most people, I thought that was the safe thing to do.

I saw my GP and a week later I was at the dermatology unit in the local hospital being examined. The plastic surgeon performed a biopsy just two hours later.

I had one long special stitch to hold the scar together as it was on my thigh and the skin can stretch, forming a wider scar. The sample was sent off to the histology department, where they check the skin.

Two weeks later, the surgeon broke the terrifying news that I’d had a malignant melanoma – the deadliest form of skin cancer.

I was just 20, and had just started the final year of my degree. My immediate fear was whether I would need chemotherapy but fortunately the melanoma hadn’t advanced that far because it was caught very early.

My second thought was how I was going to tell my family and my partner who was waiting in the corridor.

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