I ignored an easily missed sign of deadly skin cancer – until my hairdresser marked it … everyone should perform a vital control

A two-year-old mother greeted her hairdresser for saving her life of the stylist a hidden sign of fatal melanoma skin cancer that would otherwise have been missed.

Michaela Peacock, 35, noticed a growth of 10p on her scalp while he rubbed her head scattered while he watched TV on one evening at the end of last year.

She asked her husband to look under her hair, and he confirmed that it looked like a raised mole, the couple of which she was developing in childhood.

But after a friend keeps an eye on any changes, the owner of the aesthetics clinic sent her hairdresser a photo of the lesion to ask if she had noticed it.

“She said it looked bigger and darker than when she saw it for the last time, that made me go,” said Mrs. Peacock.

“The fact that my hairdresser could say that it looks bigger meant it changed, so she helped save my life.”

At the beginning of January, Mrs. Peacock visited her doctor to have the mole checked, and the doctor immediately referred her to North West Anglia Hospital in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, for specialist research.

“The mole was brown on the edges, but really dark in the middle,” she said. “It was the pigment in it so that the doctors were worried.”

De Mol was diagnosed in early stages of the disease, but she is waiting for the results of biopsies on further lesions

De Mol was removed in the hospital, biopsy and six weeks later identified as melanoma – the deadliest form of skin cancer.

If spotted in the earliest phases, almost 100 percent of patients will survive for five years or more.

However, if the diagnosis is diagnosed in later stages, if the cancer has spread to other parts of the body, according to Cancer Research UK only about half of the patients will live for six years.

“I was shocked when they said it was melanoma,” said Mrs. Peacock. “My first thought was:” Is this going to end as a death sentence? ”.

“Melanoma who is caught early, is very treatable and healable, but when you hear the word cancer, you think of death.”

Mrs. Peacock has thought about her teenage zoms in the aftermath of her diagnosis.

WWhen I was a teenager and young adult, I never wore sunscreen because I didn’t like it, “she admitted.

‘I am very honest skin and would never brown, so to get a hint of a tan, I would first have to burn and unfortunately I had a number of terrible sunburn in the past.

Mrs. Peacock was told that her cancer probably developed as a result of periods of sunscreen that they suffered as a teenager and young adult

Signs of skin cancer vary from harmless to obvious, but experts warn that treating cases early is the key to ensure

“The consultant said it only takes once to have a blistering sunburn and melanoma can present itself 20 years later, so I think it takes care of years of not taking care of my skin.”

Since then, Mrs. Peacock has subsequently had biopsies of other birthmarks on her belly and in her lip, which doctors suspect can be signs of further cancer.

Although doctors have removed initial growth during biopsy, it may need further procedures and treatment if the other lesions are determined as cancer -like.

“I don’t think people consider skin cancer as something that is serious,” she said. “I even let people say” it’s just skin cancer. “

“What a stupid thing to say. Melanoma is deadly, it kills people. ‘

Mrs. Peacock said that she is now ‘terrified’ to go outside in the sun.

“If you get a diagnosis of melanoma, you have the feeling that you want to become a vampire,” she said. ‘I now wear SPF all the time and on sunny days I wear factor 50, a hat and sunglasses.

‘I went to pick up the children from school and even just walk through the playground to get the shadow that I could feel the sun on my arms, it makes you so paranoid.

‘I have been wearing their SPF all the time and not lying in the sun.

‘But how are you going home with that message? I don’t know how to do that, unless you scare people what my tactic is. ‘

Last year, data demonstrated that the rates of the cancer in the UK have risen by almost a third in the space of a decade.

Although the majority of the turnout has been seen in the elderly, there is an increase of seven percent in cases in people aged 25 to 49, according to the figures from Cancer Research UK.